Lake Fong, Post-Gazette In 1919, civil engineer Mao Yisheng was first to receive a doctorate from Carnegie Tech. Last week his statue was erected outside Carnegie Mellon University's Porter Hall. In a legendary career, he built the first modern bridge in China, the first Yangtze River bridge at Wuhan and helped design the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. He died in 1989. Click photo for larger image.

He came to a city of bridges to study their construction.

And after his stay in Pittsburgh, he returned to China to design -- and destroy -- some of that country's most prominent bridges.

Civil engineer Mao Yisheng was the first person to graduate with a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University, then the Carnegie Institute of Technology, in 1919.

Dr. Mao, who died in 1989, attended Carnegie Mellon when the school was in its infancy -- it had only been in existence for 19 years.

The famous engineer, who had a profound effect on the engineering and academic communities of China, last week was honored with a statue on the Carnegie Mellon campus, installed outside Baker and Porter halls.

"This is a wonderfully appropriate place for this statue because not only is his department in this building, but he would have studied in this building," Carnegie Mellon President Jared Cohon said at the statue dedication ceremony .

Dr. Mao's son-in-law, Yu-Sun Tang, of Upper St. Clair, said he believed Dr. Mao became interested in civil engineering after a fatal bridge catastrophe in China.

He said Dr. Mao was meticulous and intelligent.

"He remembered pi to the 100th digit," Mr. Tang said. People who challenged that memory would hear him recite pi, digit after digit.

While studying at Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Mao filled 200 notebooks with his ideas and innovations, said Pradeep Khosla, dean of engineering.

Dr. Mao's doctoral dissertation on secondary stresses in bridge trusses was significant to bridge theory at the time.

He designed the Qiantang River Bridge near Hangzhou.

After completing the bridge in 1937, Dr. Mao and his fellow workers had to blow it up. The Japanese were coming and the engineers were ordered to destroy the bridge to keep them from reaching China.

"The bridge was completely flattened by the same team that created it," Dr. Khosla said.

"That would be heartbreaking after all that hard work and then having to watch it get blown up," said Dr. Mao's granddaughter, Elaine Lee, of Upper St. Clair.

But Dr. Mao had kept the detailed plans of the bridge and rebuilt it after the war.

In addition, he was engineer for the first modern bridge in China, the first Yangtze River bridge at Wuhan, and he helped to design the Great Hall of the People on the western side of Tiananmen Square, in Beijing.

He also wanted to share his knowledge of civil engineering. He was a professor at five Chinese universities, and was the president of four.

Before his death at age 93, he returned to Carnegie Mellon in 1979 to receive an alumni recognition award.

The statue honoring him was made in China by sculptor Sun Lu. Standing 8 feet, 6 inches tall and cast in bronze, it depicts Dr. Mao holding blueprints. Around the statue is a relief with two marble benches designed by Long Xiang and Wang Jiangeng and bearing an inscription from China Premier Wen Jiabao.

Broad Air Conditioning Co. was the primary donor of the statue. Its chief executive officer, Zhang Yue, during a visit to Carnegie Mellon, discovered that Mao Yisheng was an alumnus.

"He was very impressed because Mao Yisheng is a national treasure in China," said Volker Hartkopf, the director for the Center for Building Performance and Design at the university.

Mr. Tang said his father-in-law's accomplishments are respected by both the Carnegie Mellon community and the people of China and he has helped build connections between the two.

"It's another bridge," he said.