Hector James Hughes

Background

Hughes was born at Centralia, Pa. in 1871. He was the son of James H. and Mary (Miller) Hughes.

Education

He attended the public schools of Williamsport. Here, and by private studies, he fitted for college and entered Harvard in the fall of 1890. His studies during the succeeding four years were largely in the traditional classical field, but he took courses in history and economics, and in the last-named subject received an honorable mention at his graduation in June 1894.

Career

Immediately on receiving his degree he entered the employ of the town engineer of Brookline, Massachussets, and spent nearly four years in the considerable variety of municipal and sanitary engineering work which such a post involves. Feeling the need of more formal technical training in his chosen profession, in the fall of 1897 he entered the Lawrence Scientific School course in civil engineering, which he completed in 1899. He then joined the engineering staff of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad in Chicago as assistant engineer of maintenance, later becoming resident engineer in charge of construction in Iowa.

Early in 1902 he left the railroad and spent a few months as designer with the American Bridge Company in Pittsburgh. With this background of rugged and varied practical experience he returned to Cambridge in 1902 as instructor in hydraulics in Harvard University. In 1914 he was made professor of civil engineering at Harvard, which chair he held until his death. From 1914 to 1918 he held the same title also in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the cooperative agreement between those two engineering schools. When this agreement terminated and the new Harvard Engineering School was established, Hughes became chairman of its Administrative Board, and in the following year (1920) he was appointed dean.

Thus, for the first eleven years of the life of the school Hughes was its executive and administrative head. He had already built up with marked success the Harvard Engineering Camp at Squam Lake, of which he was director, and he brought to the new deanship a keen interest in the problems of engineering education and noteworthy administrative ability. He was not a popular teacher but he had tact and skill to hold together a distinguished faculty, and he made the school a widely recognized institution.

He published comparatively little. A Treatise on Hydraulics (1911), written with A. T. Safford, was widely used as a textbook, although it was really far more. Theory and practice, the problems confronting the designer of hydraulic structures and the relation of these problems to experimental investigations, were discussed with clearness and balance. Due regard for the limits of accuracy in experimental work was insisted upon, a note of warning much needed in the literature of hydraulics at that time. Hughes was the author, also, of two articles, "Roads" and "Toll Roads, " in the Cyclopedia of American Government (1914), edited by A. C. McLaughlin and A. B. Hart. Later, he frequently took part in the discussion at meetings of engineering educators but rarely cared to have his remarks printed. Two of these contributions, however, are preserved in the Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education and show his rare gift of clear thinking and vigorous expression. At one meeting the slogan of "education for leadership" had been put forward as the keynote of the gathering. Hughes brought the over-enthusiastic ones back to a solid footing by remarking that "executive ability, or qualities of leadership, cannot be created by educational processes, " although they may, of course, be stimulated and developed. This careful, exact and sane thinking on the details of professional education was, perhaps, his outstanding characteristic.

Achievements

• His greatest contribution to the engineering profession was a quiet and constant insistence on the highest professional standards of thought and action and a broad interpretation of engineering training. He wanted his students – without sacrificing thoroughness of technical training – to get all that they could of the broadening influences.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Treatise on Hydraulics (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Treatise on Hydraulics T1118 book is inte...)

Personality

His figure was slight but active and well-knit, and was kept in condition by means of his favorite pastime, golf. In manner he was quiet and serious. He enjoyed meeting old friends, especially to the accompaniment of his favorite black pipe, and was a ready talker and good companion.

Connections

He was married on April 15, 1902, to Elinor Lambert of Cambridge, Massachussets, who with two daughters survived him.

Spouse:

Elinor Lambert

References

• Who's Who in America 1928 - 1929 - Vol. 15: A Biographical Dictionary Of Notable Living Men And Women In The United States