Thomas Messinger Drown

Thomas Messinger Drown (March 19, 1842 – November 17, 1904) was the fourth University President of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States. He was also an analytical chemist and metallurgist.

Background He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1842. He graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia in 1859, and then went on to study medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1862. He went abroad to Germany to study chemistry in Freiberg, Saxony, and mining at the University of Heidelberg. From 1869 to 1870 he was an instructor of metallurgy at Harvard University. In 1870, he started a consulting business in Philadelphia. In 1872, he hired a former student, John Townsend Baker, as an assistant. From 1874 to 1881, he was professor of Analytical Chemistry at Lafayette College. In 1875, he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.

His professional career was interrupted in 1881, when, after the death of his father, he devoted himself to family matters. He restarted his professional work in 1885 by accepting a professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1887, he was appointed by the newly formed Massachusetts Board of Health to a landmark study of sanitary quality of the state's inland waters. As consulting chemist to the Massachusetts State Board of Health, he was in charge of the famous Lawrence Experiment Station laboratory conducting the water sampling, testing, and analysis. There he put to work the environmental chemist and first female graduate of MIT, Ellen Swallow Richards. This research created the famous "normal chlorine" map of Massachusetts that was the first of its kind and was the template for others. As a result, Massachusetts established the first water-quality standards in America, and the first modern sewage treatment plant was created.

As a professor, Drown published a number of papers on metallurgy, mostly in Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. He was a founding member of the Institute, The curriculum leading to a degree in arts and engineering was established, as was the department of zoology and biology. New courses (majors, that is, or degree offerings, as it is now known) were also adopted in geology, and physics.

Dr. Drown eventually gained in popularity on campus, with his forward ideas, success, idiosyncratic pince-nez glasses and mustache. Faculty members eventually came to refer to Dr. Drown as "chief". Unfortunately, T. M. Drown would not live long enough to see all his ideas to fruition, as he died in office, following abdominal surgery, November 16, 1904.

Williams Hall (1903), a Beaux Arts inspired Brick structure, was erected to house the growing departments of Biology and Geology, among other functions.

In 1908, Lehigh University opened up Drown Hall which now houses Lehigh's English Department.