Born in Germany, John (Johan) Augustus Roebling graduated from the Royal Polytechnic Institute of Berlin in 1826 with the degree of Civil Engineer. Influenced by one of his teachers, the philosopher Hegel, he left Germany in 1831 to meet the challenges offered by America. After disappointing ventures as a Pennsylvania farmer, he returned to his profession taking the position of a state engineer, surveying and supervising construction of canals, locks, and dams. His idea to use wire rope in place of hemp hawsers for rail portage led him into the wire rope manufacturing business. It also led to his successful design and construction of cable suspension aqueducts and bridges.

The crowning achievement of Roebling's life was his conception of the Brooklyn Bridge, spanning the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Sadly, he did not live to see it completed. While he was surveying the bridge's location on the Brooklyn side near the Fulton Ferry slip, a boat entered the slip and crushed his foot between a piling and a timber. He contracted tetanus as a result of the injury and died two weeks later.

"It will no longer suit the spirit of the present age to pronounce an undertaking impracticable. Nothing is impracticable which is within the scope of natural laws."

In 1944, Roebling proposed a design for a cross-river aqueduct suspended from wire cables to cross the Alleghany River at Pittsburgh. He recognized that a suspension aqueduct and bridge could carry an enormous load, and his scheme appealed to the American spirit of daring enterprise and was based on sound engineering principles. From 1845 to 1846, Roebling built a wire-rope suspension bridge across the Monongahela at Pittsburgh. In 1848, he took his ideas to Trenton, NJ, where he built his wire rope manufacturing plant from the ground up, and designed and patented much of the wire-spinning equipment it used.

John A. Roebling had nine children. His oldest son, Col. Washington A. Roebling, was an accomplished civil engineer and his father's chief assistant. He completed the project, even though suffering from the bends as a result of excessive work in compressed-air chambers beneath the bridge's towers, by directing construction from his bed, within sight of the bridge. In order to help her husband, Emily Warren Roebling had earlier begun to study topics related to civil engineering. When he became incapacitated, she was well prepared to make daily site inspections, answer officials’ questions, and mediate uprisings. At the bridge dedication, Emily Roebling was recognized as "deserving equal share in his [Washington Roebling's] unparalleled achievement," and has continued to earn tribute as one of the earliest woman civil engineers.