Background
Robert Emmet McMath was born on April 28, 1833 at Varick, Seneca County, New York. He was the son of Alla and Elizabeth (Homan) McMath.
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Robert Emmet McMath was born on April 28, 1833 at Varick, Seneca County, New York. He was the son of Alla and Elizabeth (Homan) McMath.
McMath graduated from Williams College with the degree of A. B. at the age of twenty-four. Soon after his graduation, he went to St. Louis and was engaged on surveys, designs, and construction to improve the Mississippi and some of its tributaries.
In 1862 McMath became an assistant engineer in the United States Coast Survey. His first important assignment was in Nicaragua, where he made surveys of the San Juan River and Greytown Harbor in connection with an interoceanic canal proposed by a company which had obtained a grant from the Nicaraguan government. Becoming an assistant engineer in the United States Engineer Corps in 1865, he was engaged until 1883 in improving for navigation the Illinois, Arkansas, and Mississippi rivers. Of principal importance was his work on the Illinois. In 1873 he was made principal civil assistant in charge of specialphysical investigations. From 1880 to 1883 he was employed by the Mississippi River Commission. At the age of fifty, he left the government service and was appointed sewer commissioner of St. Louis, a position which he occupied for eight years. In 1893 he was elected president of the board of public improvements of St. Louis and served in this capacity until 1901. He then closed his official career, although he remained in practice as a consulting engineer until a few years before his death, which occurred at his home, Webster Groves, Mo. Originally the subject of a paper which was read December 15, 1886, and later published in the Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, it was not the first, nor has it been the last, attempt to provide an economical solution for a difficult and common problem. It has been criticized as an empiric, and not a rational, method; yet, after nearly fifty years, it is used more often than any other to determine the size for storm sewers to carry off the water of the great storms of a given locality with no excess of size or cost. His method in arriving at his formula, under St. Louis conditions, was to note every case where a sewer proved inadequate, determine the rainfall in the tributary area, and plot these on a large diagram. A line drawn to represent sewer capacity somewhat greater than indicated by the incapacities so illustrated gave the proper capacity. The formula is applicable elsewhere if certain local data are available. With the help of tables or diagrams such as those proposed by Allen Hazen and published in the American Civil Engineers' Pocket Book and elsewhere, rapid determinations of sizes of sufficient accuracy for preliminary estimates can easily be made.
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McMath was held in high esteem among engineers for his personal as well as his professional qualities. During his connection with the Mississippi River, he was looked upon as the best informed engineer on river hydraulics in America. He was a ready and careful writer and contributed to professional engineeringliterature.
On December 29, 1859, McMath married at Detroit, Mich. , Frances Brodie, a native of Berfield, England, who died February 12, 1867. He then married Eleanor Conmay Trent McMath.
