Harry Harkness Stoek

Background

Harry was born on January 16, 1866 in Washington, District of Columbia, United States, the son of Jacob F. and Susan (Lear) Stoek.

Education

Harry Stoek attended the public schools of Washington, graduating from the Central High School in 1883, and entered Lehigh University. During his college years he gave his summer vacations to practical work in geology and engineering. He graduated with the degree of B. S. in 1887, and with that of Engineer of Mines in 1888.

Career

He began his professional experience immediately as an assistant engineer for the Susquehanna Coal Company, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, doing mine surveying, engineering office work, and experimental work on the frictional resistance of mine-car wheels.

In January 1890 he was called back to Lehigh as instructor in mining and geology, and at the close of the college year 1892-93 was appointed assistant professor of mining engineering and metallurgy at Pennsylvania State College. In this capacity he served until January 1898. From teaching he now turned to technical journalism, becoming managing editor and later editor in chief of Mines and Minerals (Scranton, Pennsylvania).

His editorial work, his "Questions and Answers" department, his technical articles - for which he gathered material first-hand on visits to mining districts all over the country - made his name known throughout the mining world. He also wrote, or revised and edited, many of the mining instruction pamphlets of the International Correspondence Schools, Scranton.

It is difficult to overestimate his influence on coal-mining education, for his writings were a veritable Bible for the men in the industry. In addition, he gave lectures on coal mining at Yale, Pennsylvania State College, and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, prepared a chapter on the Pennsylvania anthracite coal field for the Twenty-second Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey (1902), and for the Carnegie Institution of Washington prepared an "Economic History of Anthracite" as a part of the "Economic History of the United States" which the Institution had projected.

In October 1909, Stoek relinquished the editorship of Mines and Minerals to accept a call from the University of Illinois to organize a department of mining engineering. Within three years he had drawn up a curriculum, built a laboratory, and initiated a large-scale program of research. His indefatigable labor and tireless energy resulted in a department which, while never large from the standpoint of student enrollment, was outstanding in the quality of its instruction and in the character and productivity of its research work. He served as its head until his death in 1923.

In Pennsylvania he had seen the results of such education, offered both in the pages of his magazine and in night schools. Through his initiative the Illinois Miners' and Mechanics' Institutes were organized, under the department of mining engineering of the University, and began their work in January 1914. At this time he published a comprehensive bulletin, Education of Mine Employees (1914).

During the summer of that year he visited England and the Continent, making a study of mining methods and of mining education, collegiate and vocational. From 1910 until the reorganization of the state department of mines in 1917, he served as a member of the Mining Investigation Commission and as member and secretary of the Illinois Mine Rescue Commission.

He was a consulting engineer for the United States Bureau of Mines, and made many private reports and investigations on such subjects as the valuation of coal properties, coal storage, and mine safety.

Death came to him suddenly, in Urbana, in his fifty-eighth year.

Achievements

• Harry Harkness Stoek served as a head of the a Department of Mining Engineering of the University of Illinois for many years. He was active in the affairs of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, the American Mining Congress, the International Railway Fuel Association, and the Coal Mining Institute of America. His numerous writings are found in the technical press, in the bulletins of the Engineering Experiment Station of the University of Illinois, and in the proceedings of engineering societies. They cover almost every phase of coal mining. In 1926 a bronze tablet by Lorado Taft, commemorating Stoek's life and work, was unveiled in the College of Engineering Library at the University of Illinois.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Study of Coal Mine Haulage in Illinois (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Study of Coal Mine Haulage in Illinois Ev...)

  • Education of Mine Employees

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Bituminous Coal Storage Practice

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Education Of Mine Employees

    (Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating bac...)

  • Education of Mine Employees, Vol. 11 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Education of Mine Employees, Vol. 11 The Il...)

  • Bituminous coal storage practice

    (Bituminous coal storage practice. 170 Pages)

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• It has been said by Dean E. A. Holbrook, in "Memorial Exercises: "To him, more than to any man of his generation, belongs the honor of changing coal mining from a rule-of-thumb trade to an engineering science".

Connections

Stoek was married to Miriam Ricketts of Wilkes-Barre, on December 20, 1894. His wife and son had died some years before; one daughter survived him.

Father:

Jacob F. Stoek

Mother:

Susan (Lear) Stoek

Wife:

Miriam Ricketts