Henri Maus

Michel Henri Joseph Maus (1808–1893) was a Belgian engineer, the inventor of the first tunnel boring machine.

Life Maus was born in Namur (then in Sambre-et-Meuse, French First Empire) on 22 October 1808, the grandson of a German who had settled in the city around 1750. His father, Jean-Michel Maus, played a political role in the Belgian Revolution of 1830. After studying at the Athénée de Namur, Henri in 1827 started work for the Société de Luxembourg as a mineralogist. In 1833 he conducted a study for the route of a stretch of a planned Meuse-Moselle canal that was never completed. In 1842 it led to Maus being seconded from the Belgian railways to France, to build a railway elevator in the Loire Valley.

Honours and awards Corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium, 16 December 1846; full member, 15 December 1864. Chevalier in the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus Rue Henri Maus, Brussels; Rue Henri Maus, Liège; Technical Institute Henri Maus, Namur.