EDWARD V. HUNTINGTON

1874-1952

Professor Huntington had been a member of the Club since 1932. He had climbed moderately in the Alps, Canadian Rockies, and Selkirks for about thirty years. In the years from 1924 on he and his wife and friends often made long pack train trips through the Canadian Rockies. In 1924, long before the road was built, the Tom Cabots, Henry Schwab, Sir James Outram, my wife, and I, joined the Huntingtons in a trail trip from Lake Louise to Mt. Robson by way of Castleguard Meadows, down Saskatchewan Glacier, over Wilcox Pass, down the Sunwapta and Athabasca to Jasper, thence northwest over Moose Pass to Robson Pass to the annual camp of the Alpine Club of Canada, a distance of about 250 miles.

Professionally, Dr. Huntington had spent most of his career at Harvard after graduating there and gaining further degrees at Strassburg and at Lima. He became Professor of Mechanics in 1919 and later, Professor Emeritus, though active for several years more, at retirement in 1941. Standing at the top rank of his profession, he occupied the rather unusual position of teaching pure mathematics in the college and applied mathematics in the engineering school, simultaneously. He contributed voluminously to professional journals. In 1941 he achieved an ambition of more than twenty years by having enacted a Federal law to make the method of equal proportions operative in the appointment of Representatives in Congress. Upon his retirement he was presented with a beautifully bound volume of letters from colleagues, fellow scientists, and former students.

He was a kindly and gentle man, gifted with a quiet, charming sense of humor. He found that the mountains supplied a contrast and a balance in the middle years of his life, which gave him great pleasure and relaxation. He enjoyed the mountains in a way which is often overlooked by those bent only on difficult ascents, but his enjoyment was none the less deep, satisfying, and permanent.

H. S. Hall, Jr.