The life and work of the reinforced concrete pioneer Willy Gehler (1876–1953) will be studied within an interdisciplinary research project at the TU Dresden. Due to the fact that the contributions of the former professor of the TH Dresden and head of the Dresden testing office will be reviewed from an engineer’s perspective (Institute of Concrete Structures) as well as from an historic view (Chair of History of Technology and Technological Sciences), we expect to have a comprehensive understanding of him. Because of his membership in the Nazi-party NSDAP, Gehler fell into disgrace and as a result, his research was not recognized. The following paper tries to describe the career of Gehler in the triangle of research, industry and administration which was developed by Karl-Eugen Kurrer in the late 1990’s.