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THE SCHOOL

BELLIER Jean

Engineer

Birth : 1905[Paris]
Death : 1986
Promotion IPC : 1928

 

One of 6 children born in Paris to parents from Touraine and Bourbonnais, Jean BELLIER spent his childhood between several cities, as the family followed his father’s assignments within the Paris-Orléans railway company. After graduating as an engineer at Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in 1928, Jean BELLIER began his career at the Société Hydroélectrique de la Cère, in the Massif Central region.Following the firm’s bankruptcy in the early 1930s, he joined the Haute Dordogne Infrastructure Department under André COYNE, renamed the Large Dams Technical Department in 1935. Jean BELLIER very quickly became André COYNE’s design specialist and was involved in the design of the Marège dam on the Dordogne.André COYNE then took him to the Aigle dam project, still on the Dordogne.Jean BELLIER was the designer of this structure, which built on the innovations introduced for the Marèges dam.


Portrait of BELLIER © ENPC

Biography

 

During World War II, the company also designed the Chastang dam on the Dordogne and other structures in the Southern zone from its relocated offices in Mauriac (Cantal).Jean BELLIER was an active member of the Resistance network of the Aigle Dam, called the “Resistance Dam”, headed by André DECELLE (Commander Didier) who would become Chairman of EDF after the war.In 1944, the network took part in guerrilla actions and combats against the Germans.Jean BELLIER was behind several initiatives designed to hinder their movements.      

After the war, in 1947, he and André COYNE founded the André COYNE et Jean BELLIER engineering design office (ACJB).This agency’s earliest customer was EDF, for which it designed the first dams.Through the impetus of its founders, ACJB became one of the big players in the dam building world, responsible for a series of pioneering efforts in terms of conceptual and technical innovation, a unanimously acknowledged leader in the field of hydroelectric power.

Jean BELLIER oversaw all the projects and personally designed several of them or contributed actively to their conception:Bin El Oudiane in Morocco (1953), Mellegue in Tunisia with its multiple arches (1956), and Roselend in France which, with its spectacular eggshell arch, brought conceptual solutions of great ingenuity and elegance to a geologically complex site (1962).

In an entirely different field, he designed the caissons for the gas-cooled graphite nuclear reactors at Marcoule, strapped with thick prestressed cables already used on certain dams (1959).This construction won him the Légion d’Honneur.

After the catastrophic breach in the Malpasset dam in France in 1959 and the death of André COYNE in 1960, Jean BELLIER became sole director of the engineering design office.He was a leading player in research into the causes of this disaster, with his characteristic concern for scientific truth, and the ACJB teams, working with the Ecole Polytechnique’s solid-state mechanics research centre, revealed the unforeseen rock movements that caused the breach. In its legal procedures, the Council of State concluded that the disaster was unforeseeable.

In 1962, to protect the future of ACJB’s workforce, Jean BELLIER decided to form a new company:“COYNE et BELLIER – Bureau d’Ingénieurs Conseils”, in which he held the post of Chief Executive.In this role, he contributed to the construction of the Jatiluhur (Indonesia 1967) and Daniel Johnson (Canada 1968) dams.

In 1976, Jean BELLIER ceased his activities in the engineering design office to concentrate on personal research and to promote the use of vibrating wire test instruments initially designed for monitoring dams (TELEMAC).

As a member of the International Large Dams Commission for many years, he oversaw updates on the Technical Dictionary on Dams.Finally, he was the author of “Les Barrages” (Dams) in the Que Sais-je series of publications (1982).