Henry Sturgis Drinker

Henry Sturgis Drinker (8 November 1850 – 27 July 1937) was an American mechanical engineer, lawyer, author, and the fifth president of Lehigh University. He worked for the Lehigh Valley Railroad and led construction of the two-mile tunnel through Musconetcong Mountain. He published several books and articles on tunnel construction and railroad law. He served as president of the American Forestry Association from 1912 to 1916 and was made an honorary member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers in 1920.

Early life and education Drinker was born November 8, 1850, in Hong Kong, the third child of expatriate Philadelphia Quaker merchant Sandwith B. Drinker and Susannah Budd Shober. Sandwith made his first trading voyage to China about 1845, and was joined there about 1849, by his wife and two children, Susannah developed uterine cancer and died two years later, leaving the children orphans.

Drinker graduated from Lehigh University with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1871. He studied law in the offices of James E. Gowen and was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1877. He received an LL.D. degree from Lafayette College in 1905, Franklin and Marshall College in 1910, and the University of Pennsylvania in 1911. After completion of the tunnel, Drinker joined the railroad's main offices in Philadelphia. He completed a law degree, and served as general solicitor for the Lehigh Valley Railroad from 1885 to 1905. Drinker left the LVRR in 1905, to become the university's fifth president, the first alumnus to hold the position. He established the College of Business in 1910 (endowed by steelmaker John Fritz), and organized the Alumni Association, which published an alumni bulletin and created a university endowment separate from the Packer bequest.

Personal life Drinker married Aimee Ernesta “Etta” Beaux on December 2, 1879. Between 1880 and 1893, the couple and their growing family lived at various West Philadelphia addresses, before building a large suburban house on the campus of Haverford College. Drinker accepted the presidency of Lehigh University in 1905, and the family moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

At age 80, Henry Sturgis Drinker completed an autobiography (1931, unpublished). He died in 1937 and was interred in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.

Publications A Treatise on Explosive Compounds, Machine Rock Drills and Blasting, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1883 General Railroad and Telegraph Laws of the State of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: Allen, Lane & Scott, 1884 Tunneling, Explosive Compounds, and Rock Drills, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1893