Herbert Henry Dow

Herbert Henry Dow, the chemist and inventor who turned the salt brine beneath Midland, Michigan, into the foundation of the Dow Chemical Company, died at Rochester, Minnesota, on October 15, 1930. He was sixty-four. He was born on February 26, 1866, in Belleville, Ontario, to American parents from Derby, Connecticut, who brought him home when he was six weeks old. The family later moved to Cleveland, where his father worked as a mechanical engineer. At the Case School of Applied Science he studied the chemistry of underground brines and found that samples from Canton, Ohio, and Midland were unusually rich in bromine, then prized for medicines and photography. He received his first patent in 1889 for a cheaper way to extract bromine. His first company failed within a year, but backers helped him start the Midland Chemical Company in 1890, and by 1891 he had developed an electrolytic method for pulling bromine from brine. When his investors balked at further experiments, he struck out again, and in 1897 he organized the Dow Chemical Company, which soon absorbed the older firm. In the early 1900s a German-backed bromine cartel tried to drive him out of business by dumping cheap bromine in the United States. Dow quietly bought the underpriced product, repackaged it, and sold it in Europe at a profit until the cartel gave up the price war. During the First World War, with German chemical supplies cut off by blockade, his company produced magnesium, phenol and other materials the country needed. Afterward he championed magnesium for lightweight automobile pistons, and Dowmetal pistons rode in the car that won the 1921 Indianapolis 500. He married Grace Anna Ball, a Midland teacher, in 1892; they had seven children. Their son Willard succeeded him as head of the company. A prolific inventor of chemical processes, he also planted the Midland gardens that grew into today's Dow Gardens. He died of cirrhosis of the liver while under care at Rochester, Minnesota.