José Antonio Jiménez Salas

José Antonio Jiménez Salas (10 March 1916 – 15 November 2000) was a Spanish professor of civil engineering and an elected academic of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences.

Life and career Jiménez Salas was born in Zaragoza in 1916. He attended a Marist Brothers school in Zaragoza, before completing his initial education at IES San Isidro after his family moved to Madrid. After completing his high school studies, he studied at the School of Civil Engineering (, ETSICCP) in Madrid. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in which he fought after enlisting in Zaragoza in 1936. He returned to his studies after the war and graduated as a Civil Engineer in 1942, as the second-placed student in a class of eighteen. and is notable as the principal author of a series of books on geotechnical engineering and foundations, published in three volumes between 1971 and 1980:

The first volume, (English: Geotechnics and Foundations I), was published in two editions, the first in 1971 and a second in 1975. At 466 pages long, it focused on the properties of soils and rocks, and was well received by students and geotechnical engineering practitioners in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries.

Geotecnia y Cimientos II: Released in two editions (1976 and 1981), this 1187-page volume addresses the mechanics of soil and rocks, offering calculation methods and in-depth treatment of elasticity, plasticity, and other foundational concepts in geotechnics. In the same year, Jiménez Salas founded the International Course on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering at the Centro de Estudios y Experimentación de Obras Públicas, which was mainly aimed at educating postgraduate students from Latin America. The course has subsequently developed into a Master's Degree in Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. He received the Grand Cross of the Order of Civil Merit in 1974, and the Medal of Honour for the Promotion of Invention from the Spanish Government in 1994. He died in Madrid in November 2000. A plaza in the Valdebebas neighbourhood of Madrid was subsequently named for him.

Selected bibliography Jiménez Salas, J.A. (1945) Notas sobre Mecánica de Suelo [Notes on Soil Mechanics], Revista de Obras Públicas (ROP), Vol. I, Nos. 2764-2766, pp. 341-350, 400-415, 471-481. Jiménez Salas, J.A. (1951) La Mecánica del Suelo y sus aplicaciones a la ingeniería [Soil Mechanics and its Engineering Applications], Madrid: Dossat. Jiménez Salas, J.A. and de Justo Alpañes, J.L. (1971) Geotecnia y cimientos [Geotechnics and Foundations], Spain: Editorial Rueda. Jiménez Salas, J.A., de Justo Alpañes, J.L., Serrano González, A. (1976) Geotecnia y Cimientos II: Mecánica del Suelo y de las Rocas [Geotechnics and Foundations II: Mechanics of Soil and Rocks], Madrid: Rueda J.M., Ediciones, S.A. Jiménez Salas, J.A. and de Cañizo Perate, L. (1980) Geotecnia y Cimientos III: Cimentaciones, Excavaciones y Aplicaciones [Geotechnics and Foundations III: Foundations, Excavations, and Applications], Madrid: Rueda J.M., Ediciones, S.A. Jiménez Salas, J.A. (1982) Aportaciones científicas españolas a la Geotecnia: discurso leído en el acto de su recepción [Spanish Scientific Contributions to Geotechnics: speech read at his reception], Madrid: Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Jiménez Salas, J.A. and Serrano, A. (1984) Condiciones geotécnicas del túnel bajo el estrecho de Gibraltar [Geotechnical Conditions of the Tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar], Revista de Obras Públicas (ROP), No. 3227, pp. 533-553.