Henry C. Bourne, Jr.

Henry Clark Bourne Jr. (December 31, 1921 – March 25, 2010) was an electrical engineer, administrator and faculty member at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 1981 until 1993. He was initially recruited by Georgia Tech president Joseph M. Pettit to be Georgia Tech's vice president of academic affairs; Bourne focused on faculty recruitment. Bourne would later serve as Georgia Tech's interim president after Pettit died of cancer in 1986.

He established, and is the namesake for, the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Jr. Chair in Poetry, first held by Thomas Lux, and now held by Ilya Kaminsky.

Early life and education Born in Tarboro, North Carolina, Bourne graduated from Virginia Episcopal School in 1940. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1944, a Master's in 1948, and a Ph.D. in 1952, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in electrical engineering. His education was put on hold during World War II, when he served in the Army Corps of Engineers from 1943 to 1946. While at MIT, he was a member of Delta Tau Delta.

Career Following graduation, he served on the MIT faculty until he joined the University of California, Berkeley, at which he was a professor of electrical engineering from 1954 to 1963. He then went to Rice University, where he was a professor for 16 years and chair of the electrical engineering department for 11 of those years. He and his wife, named honorary alumni in 1987, established the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Jr. chair in poetry at Georgia Tech. He was named an honorary research associate at University College London, and a Fellow of the AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science.