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ONE stormy night in Boston in 1973, the windows of the John Hancock Tower began dropping onto the pavement. Alan Davenport was called in to help. Five years later, when structural engineers discovered that the newly completed 59-story Citicorp Center in New York was at risk of collapse, Davenport’s phone was soon ringing again.

In Wind Wizard, Siobhan Roberts reveals Davenport as one of the unsung heroes of the construction industry. In the early 1960s, he established a wind tunnel lab at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, where he simulated the effects of wild, tumbling air flows on structures of all kinds. The techniques he pioneered have helped protect our biggest bridges and buildings from extreme weather conditions ever since.

Roberts’s book is more than an account of Davenport’s life – it also provides fascinating insights into some of civil engineering’s greatest achievements, and closest shaves. She reminds us how much we rely on wind engineering: from portable toilets to space rockets, Davenport tested everything. He even deciphered the complex winds at Amen Corner, a tricky section of the Augusta National Golf Club course in Georgia, using a model and 40 years of meteorological data.

Davenport died in 2009 but his monuments are all around us – including the two skyscrapers he helped to save in the 1970s. With climate change making violent storms like Sandy more common, the story of the wind wizard has never been more relevant.