Herbert Henry Dow

Herbert Henry Dow (February 26, 1866 – October 15, 1930) was a Canadian chemical industrialist. He was a graduate of Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio. His most significant achievement was the founding of the Dow Chemical Company in 1897. He was a prolific inventor of chemical processes, compounds, and products, and was a successful businessman.

Biography

Early years

Herbert Henry Dow was born in 1866 in Belleville, Ontario, the eldest child of the Americans Joseph Henry Dow, an inventor and mechanical engineer, and his wife, Sarah Bunnell, who were from Derby, Connecticut. When the infant boy was six weeks old, the family returned to their hometown. They moved again in 1878, this time to Cleveland, Ohio (USA) to follow Joseph's job with the Derby Shovel Manufacturing Company.

Dow was a precocious child, often helping his father with mechanical problems, and inventing an incubator for chicken eggs before he was 12. Several years later he and his father invented together a small steam turbine which the United States Navy used for many years in torpedo propulsion.