748 COMMEMORATION OF PROF. HENRY A. ROWLAND. 



estimate of hi.s influence in promoting the interests of physical science 

 during the last quarter of the nineteenth century would be quite inade- 

 quate if not made from that point of view. Born at Honesdale, Penn- 

 sjdvania, on November 27, 1848, he had the misfortune, at the age of 

 11 years, to lose his father by death. This loss was made good, as far 

 as it is possible to do so. by the loving care of mother and sisters dur- 

 ing the years of his boyhood and youthful manhood. From his father 

 he inherited his love for scientiiic study, which from the ver}^ first 

 seems to have dominated all of his aspirations, directing and controll- 

 ing most of his thoughts. His father, grandfather, and great-grand- 

 father were all clergymen and graduates of Yale College. His father, 

 who is described as one "interested in chemistry and natural philoso- 

 phy, a lover of nature and a successful trout fisherman," had felt, in 

 his early youth, some of the desires and ambitions that afterwards 

 determined the career of his distinguished son, but yielding, no doubt, 

 to the influence of family tradition and desire, he followed the lead of 

 his ancestors. It is not unlikely, and it would not have been unrea- 

 sonable, that similar hopes were entertained in regard to the future of 

 young Henry, and his preparatory school work was arranged with this 

 in view. Before being sent away from home, however, he had quite 

 given himself up to chemical experiments, glass blowing, and other 

 similar occupations, and the members of his family were often sum- 

 moned by the enthusiastic boy to listen to lectures which were fully 

 illustrated by experiments, not alwa3^s free from prospective danger. 

 His spare change was invested in copper wire and the like, and his 

 first five-dollar bill brought him, to his infinite delight, a small gal- 

 vanic battery. The sheets of the New York Observer, a treasured 

 family newspaper, he converted into a huge hot-air balloon, which, to 

 the astonishment of his family and friends, made a brilliant ascent and 

 flight, coming to rest, at last, and in flames, on the roof of a neighbor- 

 ing house, and resulting in the calling out of the entire fire depart- 

 ment of the town. When urged by his bo}' friends to hide himself 

 from the rather threatening consequences of his first experiment in 

 aeronautics, he courageously marched himself to the place where his 

 balloon had fallen, saying, '"No, I will go and see what damage I have 

 done." When a little more than 16 years old, in the spring of 1865, 

 he was sent to Phillips Academy at Andover to be fitted for entering 

 the academic course at Yale. His time there was given entirely to the 

 study of Latin and Greek, and he was in ever}' way out of harmony 

 with his environment. He seems to have quickly and thoroughly 

 appreciated this fact, and his very first letter from Andover is a cry 

 for relief. "Oh, take me home," is the boyish scrawl covering the 

 last page of that letter, on another of which he says, "It is simply 

 horrible; I can never get on here." It was not that he could not learn 

 Latin and Greek if he was so minded, but that he had long ago become 



