Return of a Lost Generation — Gabriel Lamé
Gabriel Lamé was a prominent member of a “lost generation” of engineers who launched the French railroad industry in the 1830s. The fall of Napoleon Bonaparte’s empire in 1814/15 stranded a generation of engineering graduates from the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique. Under the conservative government, established by the subsequent restoration of the monarchy in France, newly minted engineers with an ambition to change the world were encouraged to do so elsewhere.
And so, Lamé joined an expatriate community of young engineers who departed France for Russia, officially on loan to the Russian government. There they trained engineers and helped build a modern transportation system for Russia. A change in the political climate in 1830 brought these engineers back to Paris, now matured and imbued with the Saint Simonian philosophy of social progress through the advance of technology.
Drawing on their experiences in Russia and first-hand knowledge of recent advances in England, Lamé along with Émile Clapeyron and the brothers Stephane and Eugene Flachat developed a vision for modernizing transportation in France. They saw an opportunity to create an intermodal system of interlinked networks of canals and rails, and their plan included an assessment of the technological, managerial, and financial resources that would be needed to create such a system.
It would be nearly 10 more years before the French government produced a plan to create a national rail network, but the vision put forth by Lame and his co-authors attracted the needed interest and support, particularly from bankers who would finance the building of the railroads.
Eventually, Lamé followed his real interests into a career of mathematical research and teaching physics at the Ecole Polytechnique. His colleagues continued in engineering practice and played important roles as builders of the railroad industry in France.
Gabriel Lamé is one of the 72 engineers and scientists named on the Eiffel Tower.
