Henry Marion Howe Medal

Of the medal awards conferred periodically by ASM, the Henry Marion Howe Medal is the oldest; it was established in 1923 and is awarded in memory of a distinguished teacher, writer, metallurgist and consultant, to honor the author (or authors) whose paper has been selected as the best of those published in a specific volume of Metallurgical and Materials Transactions.

Henry Marion Howe, Honorary Member of ASM, whose memory is thus perpetuated, was born in Boston on 2 March 1848. With a preliminary education at the Boston Latin School, he graduated as A.B. from Harvard in 1869 and with a degree corresponding to B.S. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1871. Harvard awarded him the degrees of A.M. in 1872 and LL.D. in 1905. In the years 1872 to 1882, he held executive positions with a number of steel mills and with copper and nickel plants. In 1882, he opened an office in Boston as a consulting metallurgist and lectured on metallurgy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1883 to 1897. He became Professor of Metallurgy at Columbia University in 1897, and held this position until 1913, serving as Professor Emeritus from 1913 until his death on 14 May 1922.

Dr. Howe's chief contribution to the scientific world was his development of the science of metallography, as a result of his great powers of observation and deduction. His ability to correlate and interpret each discovery and investigation by others and supplement them by investigations of his own resulted in the establishment of a new science dealing with the constitution of iron and steel.

Prof. Terence G. Langdon
Professor
Department of Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA

Prof. Yong Li
Department of Information and Computer Science
University of California - Irvine
Irvine, CA

For their paper titled "Fundamental Aspects of Creep in Metal Matrix Composites," which was published in the February 1999 issue of Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A.