The American physicist Henry Augustus Rowland (1848-1901) made fundamental contributions to magnetism and to celestial physics.

Henry Augustus Rowland was born on Nov. 27, 1848, in Honesdale, Pa., the descendant of a long line of clergymen. He studied at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., and then graduated from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in civil engineering. During the next 2 years he did some work in his profession and taught natural science at Wooster University, Ohio. In the spring of 1872 he returned to Rensselaer as instructor in physics. While at Rensselaer he published an important paper on magnetism which brought him favorable attention from the English physicist James Clerk Maxwell and an appointment as professor of physics at the newly established Johns Hopkins University, designed to be the model of a graduate school. This early paper brought lasting fame to Rowland, for it proved to be the starting point for...