Henry Augustus Rowland

Henry Augustus Rowland
Henry Augustus Rowland (1848-1901)
Born	(1848-11-27)November 27, 1848 Honesdale, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	April 16, 1901(1901-04-16) (aged 52) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Nationality	American
Fields	Physicist
Institutions	University of Wooster Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Johns Hopkins University
Alma mater	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Academic advisors	Hermann von Helmholtz
Doctoral students	Edwin Hall Harry Fielding Reid Joseph Sweetman Ames William Jackson Humphreys
Known for	Diffraction grating
Notable awards	Rumford Prize (1883) Henry Draper Medal (1890) Matteucci Medal (1895)

Henry Augustus Rowland (November 27, 1848 – April 16, 1901) was an American physicist. Between 1899 and 1901 he served as the first president of the American Physical Society. He is remembered today particularly for the high quality of the diffraction gratings he made and for the work he did with them on the solar spectrum.

Rowland (born 1848, died 1901) was born in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, where his father Henry Augustus Rowland was the Presbyterian pastor of a local church. From an early age he exhibited marked scientific tastes and spent all his spare time in electrical and chemical experiments. At the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, N.Y. he graduated in 1870, and he then obtained an engagement on the Western New York railway. But the work there was not to his liking, and after a short time he gave it up for an instructorship in natural science at the University of Wooster, Ohio, which in turn he resigned in order to return to Troy as assistant professor of physics. Finally, in 1876, he became the first occupant of the chair of physics at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, a position which he retained until his premature death on April 16, 1901.

Rowland was one of the most brilliant American scientists of his day, and it is curious that at first his merits were not perceived in his own country. He was unable to secure the publication of many of his early scientific papers; but James Clerk Maxwell at once saw their excellence, and had them printed in the Philosophical Magazine. When the managers of the Johns Hopkins University asked advice in Europe as to whom they should make their professor of physics, he was pointed out in all quarters as the best man for the post. In the interval between his election and the assumption of his duties at Baltimore, he studied physics under Hermann von Helmholtz in his laboratary in Berlin (1875–6), and carried out a well-known research on the effect of an electrically charged body in motion, showing it to give rise to a magnetic field.