Charles Alton Ellis was a professor, structural engineer and mathematician who was chiefly responsible for the structural design of the Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to...

. Because of a dispute with Joseph Strauss, he was not recognized for his work when the bridge opened in 1937.

Ellis was born in Parkman, Maine in 1876 and earned a degree in mathematics from Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

 and a graduate certificate in engineering

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

 (C.E.) from the University of Illinois. During his career, he was a professor at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

, the University of Illinois, and Purdue University

Purdue University

Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...

.

A dispute over the time it was taking to complete the design, along with the number of telegrams Ellis was using to discuss the design with Leon Moisseiff

Leon Moisseiff

Leon S. Moisseiff was a leading suspension bridge engineer in the United States of America in the 1920s and 1930s. He was awarded The Franklin Institute's Louis E...

, led Strauss to accuse Ellis of wasting time and money and to dismiss him from the project. The copy of the engineering drawings for the Golden Gate Bridge on file at the Library of Congress is signed by Ellis, but the plaque placed on the bridge in 1937 did not give him any credit.

As of May 10, 2007, Ellis was officially given recognition for his part in the designing process of the Golden Gate Bridge.