REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON NECROLOGY.

HOWARD SCOTT WEBB.

Howard Scott Webb was born in Hartland, Maine, October 10, 1865, and died at Hebron, Maine, June, 12, 1905.

Although ranked among the younger professors of the University of Maine, he had attained to an efficiency and weight of influence usually attaching to men older in years and in experience. The main points in the story of Professor Webb's active life can be briefly given.

He fitted for college in the High School at Skowhegan, Maine, where his father held the position of Clerk of Courts. At the University of Maine he pursued the course in Mechanical Engineering, maintaining high standing in scholarship and graduating with the Bachelor's degree in 1887. Later he received the degree of Mechanical Engineer from his Alma Mater.

In the same institution he held the position of Instructor in Shopwork from 1887 to 1897, but devoted the year 1890-91 to graduate work at Cornell University. He served as Registrar of the University of Maine from 1889 to 1895 and as Secretary of the Faculty from 1890 to 1895. In 1897, Instructor Webb was granted leave of absence for two years, to prepare himself to take charge of the then recently introduced department of Electrical Engineering, a position for which he had shown an especial aptitude.

In further preparation for this appointment, he passed the year 1897-8 at the University of Wisconsin, where he was reported by Professor Jackson as the most brilliant student that had ever come under his instruction. From this institution he received the degree of Electrical Engineer. The following year, 1898-9, he devoted to practical work with the General Electric Company, at Schenectady, N. Y.

Thus equipped, he returned to the University of Maine in 1899, and served it with great fidelity and efficiency as Professor of Electrical Engineering for the remaining six years of his life.

As a teacher, Professor Webb was a man of rare ability. He had the power of imparting his own transparency of thought to others, and hence of securing to his pupils the mastery of even

the most abstruse demonstrations. This lucid quality in his teaching won for him great acceptance with the students under his charge. He was modest, manly and upright, and inspired like qualities in those who came within the sphere of his influence. While in the midst of active duties, early in the spring of 1905, he was attacked with pneumonia, which was followed by typhoid fever. In the subsequent prostration, tuberculosis developed, which, in his enfeebled condition, he was powerless to resist. Human aid and sympathy could not avert the sad and fatal result.

In his death, the University has met with a loss which is keenly felt and deemed well-nigh irreparable. His associates in the faculty have lost a companion and friend held in high esteem and affection, his classes, a faithful and wise counsellor and guide, and the larger community of which he was an estimable member, a man of the highest personal integrity and worth. By all, he will continue to be held in faithful and honored remembrance.

M. C. FERNALD.

LYMAN HALL.

Dr. Hall was born in Americus, Georgia, February 18, 1859. His preparative school work was in the Americus public schools, after which he spent three years at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, leaving college, however, before his senior year. The next two years were spent in office work at Americus. In 1877, he received an appointment to the Military Academy at West Point, from which institution he was graduated with distinction in the class of 1881. Immediately after graduation, however, young Hall received an honorable discharge from the army owing to an accident received on the parade ground during drill. Though this was the one great disappointment of his life-a disappointment from which he never fully recovered-these years at West Point had meant to him much. They had given him a mastery of the science of mathematics; but they had, more than this, fixed deeply in his character the ideas of thorough discipline, perfect truthfulness, and obligation to duty, which became prominent and distinctive elements of his personality.

Debarred from a career in the army, he entered the most obvious opening for a man of his tastes and acquirements; namely, the work of a teacher in a military school.

After two years as commandant at the old Georgia Military Institute at Kirkwood, Ga., he became, in 1883, Professor of Drawing and Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the South Carolina Military Academy in Charleston, S. C. He filled this position until 1886, when he returned to the Georgia Military Institute as Commandant and Professor of Mathematics.

During his residence in Charleston, he married Miss Annie Toomer Jennings, who with four children, two daughters and two sons, survive him.

He

In October, 1888, the Georgia School of Technology formally opened its doors, and Dr. Hall began his connection with the school in the capacity of Professor of Mathematics. During the busy years that followed, through his wide and exact knowledge, his genius for teaching, his enthusiasm in his work, and his force of personality, he became the dominant figure in the school. found time, moreover, to write and publish several mathematical treatises-the best known of which, his "Elements of Algebra," has been and is largely used in high school work; to take an active interest in the local military companies; and to extend his acquaintance with men of state and men of affairs. In this last respect, Dr. Hall distinguished himself from the great body of school men. He never confined his horizon to the four walls of the school room or the office. His eye was continually on the world and its progress, and few men in the South in like positions have had so intimate an acquaintance with the great world of practical affairs. A large part of the effectiveness of his management of the school may be traced direct to this cause.

During the school year 1895-1896, the president of the Technological School resigned his office, and, after successfully filling the unexpired term, Dr. Hall was unanimously chosen president in June, 1896. He now began at once carefully to lay plans for the development of the institution, to enlarge the plant, to extend its influence, to raise the standard and value of its work, and generally to increase its usefulness; and threw himself—all of himself -into the work with a generous ardor and devotion that made failure impossible. Every detail of the school system was brought under the scrutiny of his office; the state legislature was untiringly besought to increase its annual appropriation; when the state was unwilling or unable to supply the needed funds, applicationundiscouraged by refusal-was made to philanthropists and monied

men.

Through his own solicitation, Dr. Hall secured for the school fully $100,000. Under this masterly management, the school grew, grew by leaps and bounds, and with it grew the name and fame of Lyman Hall, until he became known as one of the leading educators of the United States; he was not infrequently invited to speak before even the great institutions of the East. In recognition of his work, Washington and Lee University conferred upon him in 1903 the degree of LL.D.

A strain of this kind, however, could not last indefinitely, and the collapse came just as he was realizing the fruition of his labors. His health failed completely during the spring of 1905, and on the sixteenth of August he died in a sanatarium at Dansville, N. Y. His body was brought for burial to Atlanta, where it lies in the beautiful West View Cemetery.

The best record of Dr. Hall's life, however, is written in the history of the school to which he devoted his best energies; and what therein he attained can be realized only by comparing the crude beginnings of his work with the present fulfilment of his ideal.

In 1888 the Georgia School of Technology was definitely established, and opened to the boys of Georgia and the South. A technical school was a novelty in the state. It excited curiosity, and the immediate patronage was highly gratifying. Then the novelty began to wear off, and the school entered upon a period of decline. The average attendance dropped to about sixty. Even the ardent champions of the institution feared that it was doomed to failure. The legislature was indifferent to it, and was reluctant to provide for it out of the state funds. Its equipment, moreover, was inadequate in every particular. This was the condition of affairs when Dr. Hall became president. Then came a change. At every turn he began the work of rehabilitation and expansion. Year by year, larger state appropriations were pled for and finally secured; new buildings appeared; the present beautiful campus was evolved from the former dreary surroundings; new departments and courses were added; the corps of instructors was increased; more students were enrolled: and the school gradually took an unquestioned rank among the really excellent polytechnic institutions of the United States. To-day nine handsome brick structures, equipped with every modern appliance for technical education, have supplanted the two buildings that faced the campus in 1895; the attendance

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has become about six hundred; more than forty instructors teach these young men; and degrees are given in six branches of engineering.

It is in figures of this kind that it is easiest to show what the life of Lyman Hall has meant to Georgia, but the best part of his work lies behind and beyond mere statistics. Dr. Hall was the real creator of technical education in his state. It was he who taught the public the essential difference between technical training and technical education; he drew the definite line of demarcation between the artisan and the engineer. Dr. Hall taught the people of Georgia the dignity of the overalls.

The death of Lyman Hall was a severe loss to the institution over which he presided, but the solidity and soundness of his work was such that even his death could not retard its continued growth and expansion; and the Georgia School of Technology to-day looks forward confidently to a future of ever-increasing dignity and usefulness-the one great memorial to the man who, without any savor of exaggeration, fashioned it out of his own splendid life. WILLIAM GILMER PERRY.

ALBERT HENRY HELLER.

Albert Henry Heller, youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. George C. Heller, was born at Wapakoneta, O., December 18, 1866, attended the common schools, and graduated from the High School of that place. He entered the service of a local drug firm, where he served for some time, and might have remained in that business had he not been persuaded to attend college by teachers who had earlier noticed his mental aptness.

He entered the Ohio State University in 1885 and graduated with the degree of civil engineer in 1890. During his college course he spent one year in teaching school to gain funds with which to finish the fourth year. After graduation, he entered the service of the Massillon Bridge Co. as draftsman, and his subsequent rise in his chosen line was steady. Draftsman, Massillon Bridge Co., 1890-91; draftsman, Mt. Vernon Bridge Co., 1892; assistant chief engineer Youngstown Bridge Co., 1893-99; chief engineer of the same company, 1899-1900; he became assistant to the vice-president of the American Bridge Company upon the absorption of the Youngstown plant by the larger company. While