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Leif Johan Sverdrup (11 January 1898 – 2 January 1976) was a Norwegian-born American civil engineer and general with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his service in the Southwest Pacific Area during World War II where he was Chief Engineer under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. The son of a distinguished Norwegian family, Sverdrup emigrated to the United States in 1914. After serving with the US Army in World War I, he earned a degree in civil engineering at the University of Minnesota in 1921. He worked for a time for the Missouri State Highway Department before founding Sverdrup & Parcel, a civil engineering firm specializing in bridge construction, with John Ira Parcel, his former University of Minnesota engineering professor. His firm was involved in the construction of a number of important bridges, including the Washington Bridge and Amelia Earhart Bridge over the Missouri River and the Hurricane Deck Bridge over the Lake of the Ozarks. In 1941, Sverdrup became involved with the construction of a chain of airstrips across the Pacific Ocean to enable heavy bombers to be delivered to the Philippines. He was re-commissioned in the US Army as a colonel in 1942 and became Chief of the Construction Section in General MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area. In 1942 he made three treks across the Owen Stanley Range in Papua and New Guinea on engineer reconnaissance missions into enemy-occupied territory, for which he was decorated with the Silver Star and the Distinguished Service Medal. In 1944 he became the theater's Chief Engineer. After the war he commanded the 102nd Infantry Division of the US Army Reserve from 1947 to 1958. Sverdrup & Parcel went on to design and oversee the construction of many major projects, including the Arnold Engineering Development Center and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, the latter being named one of the Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern World after its completion in 1964. The firm's reputation was later tarnished by the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge on 1 August 2007. ==Early life== Leif Johan Sverdrup was born in Ytre Sula, Norway, on 11 January 1898, the son of Edvard Sverdrup, a high school teacher and Lutheran minister, and his second wife Agnes née Vollan. The family was a distinguished one in Norway: Leif was the great-nephew of Johan Sverdrup, the former Prime Minister of Norway; the grandson of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup, the politician; the cousin of Otto Sverdrup, the Arctic explorer; the half-brother of the oceanographer and meteorologist Harald Sverdrup; and the brother of the mining engineer and businessman Einar Sverdrup and women's rights activist Mimi Sverdrup Lunden. Leif was educated at Nordstrand Middle School and Aars and Voss School in Oslo. Following a quarrel with his father, Leif left Norway for America to stay with his relatives in Minnesota, the family of his cousin George Sverdrup, the son of the theologian Georg Sverdrup, who had settled in Minneapolis in 1874. Arriving in New York City on 7 December 1914, he entered Augsburg College, Minneapolis, in September 1916, and graduated with his Bachelor of Arts degree in May 1918. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Leif J. Sverdrup」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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