Andrews, George Leonard (31 August 1828–04 April 1899), soldier, engineer, and educator, was born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, the son of Manasseh Andrews and Harriet Leonard. After attending the state normal school at Bridgewater, he was accepted as a candidate at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He graduated at the head of the class of 1851 and was appointed second lieutenant of engineers. His first duty after graduation was in his home state, participating in the construction of Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. He then returned to the academy as an assistant professor....
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Andrews, George Leonard (1828-1899), soldier, engineer, and educator
Rod Paschall
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Cooke, Morris Llewellyn (1872-1960), consulting management engineer
Sondra Van Meter McCoy
Cooke, Morris Llewellyn (11 May 1872–05 March 1960), consulting management engineer, was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, one of eight children born to William Harvey Cooke, a physician, and Elizabeth Richmond Marsden. Morris Cook attended Lehigh University, where he obtained a degree in mechanical engineering in 1895. At age twenty-eight Cooke married Eleanor Bushnell Davis, an heiress who shared his progressive political views. They had no children....
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Cooke, Morris Llewellyn (1872-1960)
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Morris Cooke [left to right] Morris Cooke and H. H. Bennett, 1936. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USF34-005269-E).
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Eastman, William Reed (1835-1925), engineer, clergyman, and librarian
Kathleen Molz
Eastman, William Reed (19 October 1835–25 March 1925), engineer, clergyman, and librarian, was born in New York City, the son of the Reverend Ornan Eastman, an ordained evangelist, and Mary Reed. Eastman descended from an old New England family. Like his father, Eastman attended Yale University, where he achieved election to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated in 1854 with honors. During the first of his three distinctive professional endeavors, he worked as a civil engineer, initially on the enlargement of the Erie Canal, subsequently on the construction of the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad, and finally on the survey of the first railroad from Vera Cruz to Mexico City....
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Rautenstrauch, Walter (1880-1951), engineering educator and industrial engineer
Peter Meiksins
Rautenstrauch, Walter (07 September 1880–03 January 1951), engineering educator and industrial engineer, was born in Sedalia, Missouri, the son of Julius Rautenstrauch and Anna Nichter. He graduated with a B.S. from the University of Missouri in 1902 and was awarded his M.S. from the University of Maine in 1903. Rautenstrauch also completed a year of advanced study at Cornell University. In 1904 he married Minerva Babb; the couple had two children. From 1904 to 1906 Rautenstrauch was assistant professor at Cornell; in 1906 he moved to the Columbia School of Engineering, where he became a full professor of mechanical engineering in 1907. In 1918 he offered a course in industrial engineering. By 1920 Rautenstrauch’s interest in the field and his administrative influence persuaded President ...
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Sherwood, Thomas Kilgore (1903-1976), chemical engineer and educator
Terry S. Reynolds
Sherwood, Thomas Kilgore (25 July 1903–14 January 1976), chemical engineer and educator, was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Milton Worthington Sherwood and Sadie D. Tackaberry. His family soon moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he spent his youth.
After completing his bachelor of science degree at McGill University in 1923, Sherwood began graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a leading center for chemical engineering education, where he worked with W. H. Adams and ...
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Taylor, Frederick Winslow (1856-1915), engineer and industrial manager
Daniel Nelson
Taylor, Frederick Winslow (20 March 1856–21 March 1915), engineer and industrial manager, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Franklin Taylor, a lawyer, and Emily Winslow. Taylor’s parents, members of Quaker merchant families, were independently wealthy and devoted to the arts and philanthropy; their children had private tutors and attended exclusive schools. The Taylors’ contact with other wealthy Philadelphians included ties to the family of Edward W. Clark, the city’s most important investment banker. Frederick was particularly close to Clark’s son, Clarence M. Clark, who became his tennis partner (Taylor and Clark won the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association doubles championship in 1881), brother-in-law, and business adviser. Taylor’s later career as a management theorist and publicist was possible because of a fortune he made from Clark-inspired investments in West Virginia coal mines and other enterprises in the 1890s and afterward....
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Terman, Frederick Emmons (1900-1982), electrical engineer and educator
Stuart W. Leslie
Terman, Frederick Emmons (07 June 1900–19 December 1982), electrical engineer and educator, was born in English, Indiana, the son of Lewis M. Terman, a psychologist, and Anna Minton. He grew up on the campus of Stanford University, where his father, an expert on mental testing, taught psychology. Intellectually precocious, Terman tested at the genius level on the Stanford-Binet intelligence scale that his father had devised, and was one of the subjects in his father’s famous study of gifted children. Terman’s parents, convinced that conventional education only stifled the truly gifted, taught him at home until the age of nine. Terman then excelled in school, skipping grades and graduating at the top of his Stanford class in 1920 with a degree in chemical engineering. Switching to electrical engineering, he earned a master’s degree under ...
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Whitehead, John Boswell (1872-1954), electrical engineer, researcher, and educator
Jennifer Allain Rallo
Whitehead, John Boswell (18 August 1872–16 November 1954), electrical engineer, researcher, and educator, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of Henry Colgate Whitehead, treasurer of the Norfolk City Railway, and Margaret Walke Taylor. Whitehead’s grandfather and great-grandfather were both mayors of Norfolk, and the family was socially and politically prominent in the southern Virginia area. Whitehead left Norfolk in 1889 at the age of seventeen to pursue his education at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland....
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Wiesner, Jerome Bert (1915-1994), electrical engineer, presidential adviser, and university president
Elizabeth Noble Shor
Wiesner, Jerome Bert (30 May 1915–21 October 1994), electrical engineer, presidential adviser, and university president, was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Joseph Wiesner, a shopkeeper, and Ida Freedman. The boy grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, where he attended public schools and took an interest in electrical equipment, even creating a private telephone network with his friends. He entered the University of Michigan in 1933 and as an undergraduate became associate director of the campus radio broadcasting facility. After receiving a B.S. in both electrical engineering and mathematics in 1937 and an M.S. in electrical engineering in 1938, he continued with the radio service and with studies of acoustics. In 1940 he became chief engineer for the Acoustical and Record Laboratory of the Library of Congress. With folklorist Alan Lomax he recorded ethnic music in the southern and southwestern United States. Also in 1940, he married Laya Wainger; they had four children....
