Who is Fazlur Rahman Khan? Google Doodle celebrates his 88th birthday

CHICAGO: Google Doodle is celebrating 88th birth anniversary of Fazlur Rahman Khan, the father of skyscrapers.

The structural engineer who was named Construction’s Man of the year by Engineering News-Record In 1972 was born on April 3, 1929 in East Bengal, British India, which became East Pakistan and then Bangladesh.

Khan is known to be the “father of tubular designs” for high-rises. The structural engineer designed the Sears Tower, (now known as the Willis Tower), in Chicago, the world’s tallest building for 25 years.

His daughter Yasmin Sabina Khan wrote of his accomplishments for Google and the doodle was created by Lydia Nichols.

The Google Doodle is visible n the US, Colombia, Greece, Iceland, the UK, Portugal, Sweden, Ukraine, Japan and his country of birth, Bangladesh.

“A humanitarian in his personal as well as professional life, he was inspired by the belief that his work had a positive impact and he encouraged other engineers not to lose track of the purpose of their profession. When he was named Construction’s Man of the Year (in 1972, at the age of 42), he reflected, “The technical man must not be lost in his own technology. He must be able to appreciate life, and life is art, drama, music and, most importantly, people’,” writes Yasmin Sabina Khan, who also authored the book Engineering Architecture: The Vision of Fazlur R Khan.

At age 52, Khan died of a heart attack in 1982 while on a trip in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.