Howe, James Lewis

(b. Newburyport, Massachusetts, 4 August 1859; d. Lexington, Virginia, 20 December 1955)

chemistry.

The son of Francis Augustine Howe, a physician, and the former Mary Frances Lewis, Howe received the B.A. from Amherst College in 1880 and the M.A. and Ph.D. (1882) from the University of Göttingen. He was instructor of science at Brooks Military Academy, Cleveland, Ohio (1882–1883), professor of chemistry (later of physics and geology as well) at Central College, Richmond, Kentucky (1883–1894), and finally professor of chemistry and head of the department at Washington and Lee University (1894–1938). During World War II he was recalled from retirement to teach chemistry and German; he retired again in 1946. In 1883 he married Henrietta Leavenworth Marvine; they had two daughters and one son. In 1886 he received an honorary M.D. from the Hospital College of Medicine, Louisville, Kentucky, where he was professor of medical chemistry and toxicology.

Although regarded as the outstanding American authority on the platinum metals in general and an undisputed world authority on the chemistry of ruthenium in particular, Howe’s magnum opus remains his Bibliography of the Platinum Metals, for which the American Chemical Society, Georgia Section, awarded him the Charles H. Herty Medal for the advancement of science in the southern states (1937). Aside from some miscellaneous research in organic, analytical, and inorganic chemistry, Howe’s experimental work was confined to the compounds of the last-discovered and one of the least-known platinum metals—ruthenium—particularly its halide and cyanide complexes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Most of Howe’s works appeared in American Chemical Journal and Journal of the American Chemical Society. His dissertation, “Über die Äthyldericate des Anhydrobenzdiamidobenzols and über ein Nitril desselben,” based on research carried out under the direction of Hans Hübner, is one of his only three works in organic chemistry: the others are “A Nitrile of Anhydro-Benzdiamido-Benzene,” in American Chemical Journal, 5 (1883), 415–418; and “The Ethyl Derivatives of Anhydro-Benzdiamido-Benzene,” ibid., pp. 418–424.

His major work appeared in several parts as “Bibliography of the Metals of the Platinum Group: Platinum, Palladium, Iridium, Rhodium, Osmium, Ruthenium, 1748–1896,” in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 38, no. 1084 (1897); “Bibliography of the Metals of the Platinum Group: Platinum, Palladium, Iridium, Rhodium, Osmium, Ruthenium, 1748–1917,” in Bulletin of the U.S. Geological Survey, no. 694 (1919), compiled with H. C. Holtz; Bibliography of the Platinum Metals 1918–1930 (Newark, N.J., 1947), compiled with the staff of Baker and Co.; Bibliography of the Platinum Metals 1931–1940 (Newark, N.J., 1949); and Bibliography of the Platinum Metals 1941–1950 (Newark, N.J., 1956).

II. Secondary Literature. A discussion of Howe’s life and work is G. B. Kauffman, “James Lewis Howe: Platinum Metal Pioneer,” in Journal of Chemical Education, 45 (1968), 804–811.

George B. Kauffman