Howe

1890-91) ; D. W. Howe, Howe Geneals. . . . fames of
Ipswich (1929) J J- P. Smith, "Henry Howe, the His-
torian," in Ohio Archeeol. and Hist. Soc. Pubs., vol. IV
(1895) ; F. H. Howe, "Ohio's Historian," in The Honey
Jar, Apr. 1906; and the Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 13,

D.A.D.

HOWE, HENRY MARION (Mar. 2, 1848-
May 14, 1922), metallurgist, was born in Boston,
Mass., the son of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and
Julia (Ward) Howe \.qq.v.~\. From both parents
he inherited intelligence, spirituality, keenness,
refinement, passion for the pursuit of knowledge,
and the gift of clear and felicitous statement He
attended in prompt succession and graduated
from the Boston Latin School (1865), Harvard
College (B.A., 1869), and Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology (1871). He then became a
student in a steel works at Troy, N. Y. In 1872
he went as superintendent of a Bessemer plant
to the Joliet Iron & Steel Company, Joliet, 111.,
and the following year was associated with the
Blair Iron & Steel Works, Pittsburgh, Pa. For
five years he devoted himself to the metallurgy
of copper, making a professional trip to Chile in
1877; and from 1879 to I^S2 he was engaged in
the design and erection of copper works at Ber-
gen Point, N. J., and Capelton and Eustis, Que-
bec. In 1882 he had an experience in frontier life
as manager of the Pima Copper Mining & Smelt-
ing Company in Arizona. He then established
himself as consulting metallurgist in Boston,
Mass. (1883-97), a* tne same tmie lecturing
upon metallurgy at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. In 1897 he was called to a profes-
sorship in Columbia University, from which he
retired in 1913 with the title of professor emer-
itus.

The problem to which Howe devoted a life-
time was suggested by Alexander Lyman Holley
[q.v.] when he took "What is Steel ?" as the title
of a paper which h« read in October 1875 before
the American Institute of Mining Engineers.
This paper of Holley's had itself been called forth
by a series of articles by Howe upon the nomen-
clature of iron, which had just appeared in the
Engineering and Mining Journal (Aug. 28-Sept
18, 1875), setting forth what was then Howe's
conception of what it was that should be called
"steel" at the custom house. From Howe's sub-
sequent years of research resulted two monu-
mental works, The Metallurgy of Steel (1890),
and The Metallography of Sisel and Cast Iron
(1916), which Le Chatelier pronounced epoch-
making. He also published Copper Smelting
(1885), Metallurgical Laboratory Notes (1902),
Iron, Steel, and Other Alloys (1903), and some
three hundred other technical papers. In 1917
he undertook a study of the erosion of big guns

Howe

for the Naval Consulting Board, publishing his
results in Volume LVIII (1918) of the Trans-
actions of the American Institute of Mining En-
gineers. He was consulting metallurgist to the
United States Bureau of Standards, 1918-22, a
member of the National Research Council in
1918, and in 1919, chairman of its Division of
Engineering. In 1919 also he was scientific at-
tache of the American embassy at Paris. He was
greatly interested in the promotion of the inter-
national organization of science. Honorary mem-
ber of nine societies; president, at one time or
another, of five; he held six fellowships, was
awarded five or six medals of distinction, and
was knight of the Order of St. Stanislas (Rus-
sia), and chevalier of the Legion of Honor
(France). On Apr. 9, 1874, he married Fannie
Gay of Troy, N. Y. She accompanied him upon
all of his journeyings, and throughout their life
together was of inestimable help to him. He died
at Bedford Hills, N. Y., in his seventy-fifth year.

[Speeches at presentation of John Fritz Medal, Bull.
Am. Inst. Mining Engineers, July 1917; Trans. Am.
Inst. Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, vols. LXVIII
(1923), LXX (1924); Who's Who in America, 1922-

vol. XXI (1926) ; Eleventh Report of the Class of
of Harvard Coll. (1919) ; D. W. Howe, Howe Geneals.
. . . Abraham of Roxbury (1929); correspondence
with Henry Marion Hall; personal recollections.]
R.C.C-y.
HOWE, HERBERT ALONZO (Nov. 22,
i8s8-Wov. 2, 1926), astronomer and educator, a
descendant of Edward Howe who emigrated to
New England in 1635, settling at Lynn, was bora
in Brockport, Monroe County, N. Y., where his
father, Alonzo J. Howe, was principal of a school.
His mother, Julia M. Osgood, was the daughter
of a Baptist missionary. Alonzo Howe was later
appointed professor of mathematics in the old
Chicago University, a post that he held for many
years. He always looked after his son's educa-
tion personally, usually hearing his lessons be-
fore they were recited to the teacher. With this
personal care of his father, Howe was able to
graduate from college at sixteen years of age,
receiving the degree of A.B. from Chicago in
1875. I*1 the university he studied and mastered
a wide range of subjects—Greek, Latin, mathe-
matics, and physical sciences. The great meteor
shower of 1866 occurred when he was a boy of
eight and kindled his interest in astronomy, an
interest that became absorbing in later life. In
November 1875 he went to Cincinnati Observa-
tory where he was student and assistant until
1880. His work was confined chiefly to observa-
tion of double stars, computation of orbits, and
researches on new methods of solving Kepler's