Harry Fielding Reid
Encyclopedia
Harry Fielding Reid was an American
geophysicist. He was notable for his contributions to seismology
, particularly his theory of elastic rebound
that related faults to earthquakes.
. In 1877 Reid enrolled at the newly-founded Johns Hopkins University
, from which he earned a B.A. in 1880 as part of the second graduating class. During the following year, he entered the Hopkins Ph.D. program, which was then revolutionizing American scientific and intellectual life. Reid studied under physicist Henry Rowland
and mathematician J. J. Sylvester, two of the original Johns Hopkins professors. In February 1885 Reid was granted his doctorate with a dissertation on the spectra of platinum, an assignment typical of those that Rowland - the pioneering figure in modern spectral studies - gave his students.
While in graduate school Reid married Edith Gittings (1861–1954). Her father, James Gittings, was descended from a long-standing Baltimore County family with strong connections to the legal and medical communities of Maryland. Her mother was Mary Elizabeth MacGill, whose father was a physician in Hagerstown, MD. Together, Reid and his wife would have two children: Francis Fielding Reid, born in 1892, and Doris Fielding Reid, born in 1895. Through the Gittings line the two Reid children were distant cousins to Wallis Warfield (born 1895-6), later Duchess of Windsor.
Through his mother, Harry Fielding Reid was a great-great-grandnephew of George Washington
. In addition to this social connection, the Reids were closely involved in the academic world of Baltimore, particularly figures from the “heroic” era of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, like Sir William Osler, and graduate school friends such as Woodrow Wilson
.
in Berlin. His wife was with him throughout his stay, and they were joined for most of their travels by her mother, Mary Elizabeth MacGill Gittings. Mrs. Gittings left a diary, written on four small account books and now in the special collections department of the Johns Hopkins University library, that gives valuable information about their early years as a family. Among her observations was that her daughter regarded the German language as one of “sneezes and splutters.” Gittings found the wintertime climate of Berlin to be “foggy and dismal,” noted that the locals still ate dinner in mid-afternoon, and saw that some students (even visiting Americans) continued to fight duels.
During the autumn of 1885, Reid, his wife and mother-in-law settled into a rented house in Cambridge, UK, and remained there for the better part of a year. Reid was soon introduced to J. J. Thomson
, a young physicist who had recently been appointed to a professorship at Trinity College and made director of the Cavendish Laboratory
. This friendship, both professional and personal, was to continue within the Reid and Thomson families up to the present time (2007 CE). J. J. Thomson was 29 at the time they first met; Harry Fielding Reid was 26. Letters exchanged among the various family members reflect an intimacy that was born of their very early years together.
Both J. J. Thomson and his son George Paget (1892–1975) would go on to win Nobel Prize
s for their pioneering work in subatomic physics. J. J. still holds a unique place in the history of physics for his work in making the Cavendish Laboratory
perhaps the finest-ever school for training research physicists.
In the fall of 1886 Reid accepted an appointment at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio. He taught physics and mathematics there for eight years before being appointed an Associate at Johns Hopkins, a rank that was the equivalent of today’s Assistant Professor. For reasons not yet clear, Reid did not take the job immediately but worked for one year at the newly-founded University of Chicago. By the spring of 1896, however, he and his immediate family were back living in Baltimore for good, and they moved into a large townhouse on Cathedral Street, just a short distance from Mt. Vernon Place - then the heart of “Society” Baltimore - and the home of his parents.
in SE Alaska. He was accompanied by several young men from the Cleveland area, most of them students, one identified as H.P. Cushing. Cushing later had a long career as a geologist and was an elder brother of the celebrated neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing. Dr. Harvey Cushing
would come to Baltimore in 1896 to train at the newly-founded Johns Hopkins Hospital before being chosen to head the surgery department at Brigham in Boston.
Reid’s trip to Alaska would result in his first professional publication, a long article in volume IV of the National Geographic Magazine
, in those years still an academic journal. During 1892 he made a second expedition (like the first, evidently self-financed) with a small crew of hired men. Why any of the students and others from his first trip didn’t come a second time is unknown. Conditions in Alaska during that era could be at best called “pioneer,” and field scientists had no choice but to live in huts on the ice or else on camp on bare rock. The U.S. Navy sent a vessel past once each week during the warmer months, but the Glacier Bay
region, like most of the territory of Alaska, was otherwise a wilderness that had only had the most cursory exploration done prior to 1890. Still, Reid took a set of measurements that showed how the glaciers were moving and changing, and he proposed a theory for how the front of a glacier maintained the shape that it did. The United States Geological Survey
(USGS) would later name one of these glaciers for him.
In 1902, Reid began to collect seismological data for the USGS. At that time the science of seismology was extremely new, and there were only a handful of working seismographs anywhere in the world. One was installed at the Johns Hopkins geology lab, and in 1911 Reid would publish the first comprehensive treatment on the subject in English. His interest in such measuring devices may have begun in the early 1880s with his study under Henry Rowland
, who was a path-breaking figure in the use of fine instruments to measure and assess nature at the atomic level. Reid’s British friend and colleague, J. J. Thomson, made use of a similar interest in measurement to prove the existence of the electron as a particle with both mass and charge.
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake
offered Reid the chance to take his interest in seismology to a new level. Andrew Lawson
was then chair of the geology department at the University of California at Berkeley, and Lawson had been one of the first (1888) Hopkins Ph.D.s in geology. Perhaps through his influence Reid was chosen the only non-Californian to study the great earthquake as part of a state-funded commission. Through a close examination of how different points of land along the California coast and nearby inland had moved over the course of the previous half century - here his access to USGS data was crucial - Reid was able to determine that the earthquake was a result of forces he identified as “elastic strain.” This strain had built up slowly but unequally at points along the San Andreas Fault
, and it took a massive temblor to release the strain at that point along the fault where the greatest energy had accumulated.
During the previous generation European scientists had begun to wonder if faults were related to earthquakes, and vice-versa, but it was Harry Fielding Reid who established that there was a clear and dynamic relationship. He would call his new theory “Elastic Rebound
,” and it remains even into the 21st century at the foundation of modern tectonic studies.
in 1912 and served as president of the American Geophysical Union
from 1924-26. He corresponded with various European Societies concerned with glaciology and seismology, and in December 1926 he and his wife traveled to Japan as invited guests of an international conference on earthquake studies.
and Benjamin Franklin
worked on their own or financed the work of their friends, and a later era, from the final decades of the 19th century, when government and institutional financing caused science to become better organized even as it was made into a more bureaucratic enterprise. Reid’s long trip to Europe in 1884-86 appears to have been financed by his father, or so it would appear from a letter his wife later wrote (fall 1886) to J. J. Thomson. There is also the evidence, among his surviving papers at Johns Hopkins, of an account book from Reid’s early years of collecting data for the USGS (1902–14). That account book, which mostly records small amounts for secretarial expenses and the like, implies that Reid was expecting reimbursement from the USGS. He was not, however, earning a salary. Here seems a clear illustration of the turn that scientific inquiry was taking by 1902: there was evidently no regular income involved, yet Reid was not expected to foot the bill entirely on his own. Government subsidy – also taking place at Johns Hopkins as the geology faculty did work for the Maryland State Highway Department
after 1898 – also meant greater accountability: hence Reid’s careful recording of expenses.
Beginning in at least 1896 with the death of his father, Reid had a significant private income, at least some of which he decidated to scientific research. He was later memorialized by colleague Andrew Lawson as having been “blessed with a charming character,” that it was “always a joy to meet him.” Lawson also remarked that Reid might seem “austere” to those unknown to him, yet that was typical for the Southern elite of his day. He was a small but physically strong man, a gymnast when young and an active mountain climber through much of his long life. He is not known to have produced any Ph.D. geophysicists through the geology department at Johns Hopkins, but he did serve as an advisor to students in other fields.
in 1930 but apparently did not practice medicine other than during his U.S. Army career. His daughter Doris Fielding eventually gave up pursuit of music and art to work as a bond trader on Wall Street and in the U.S. Government bond market in Washington, D.C.
. She was life partner to the popular Classicist Edith Hamilton
and together they raised the elder Reids' first grandchild, Francis Dorian Fielding.
Harry Fielding Reid’s sister Ellen married the celebrated poet and preacher Henry van Dyke, who was the author of dozens of books, taught English at Princeton and served as U.S. Minister to the Netherlands
during World War I. His younger brother Andrew Melville stayed in the family commodities business for some period of time but then established a second home and family in the south of France.
Reid died June 18, 1944. He and his brother Andrew, along with Edith Gittings Reid and her mother, are buried in Baltimore’s Greenmount Cemetery. Their markers are surrounded by the graves of various governors, mayors, Civil War generals and other representatives of the historic Baltimore elite. Reid continues to be recognized by geologists as one of their discipline’s founding fathers. Every year the Seismological Society of America
recognizes a fellow scientist for having contributed that year’s finest work in seismology: their award is still named the Harry Fielding Reid Medal.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
geophysicist. He was notable for his contributions to seismology
Seismology
Seismology is the scientific study of earthquakes and the propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or through other planet-like bodies. The field also includes studies of earthquake effects, such as tsunamis as well as diverse seismic sources such as volcanic, tectonic, oceanic,...
, particularly his theory of elastic rebound
Elastic-rebound theory
The elastic rebound theory is an explanation for how energy is spread during earthquakes. As plates on opposite sides of a fault are subjected to force and shift, they accumulate energy and slowly deform until their internal strength is exceeded...
that related faults to earthquakes.
Early life
Harry Fielding Reid was the fourth child of seven born to Andrew Reid and Fanny Brooke Gwathmey Reid. HF Reid's mother was a descendant of Betty Washington Lewis, sister of the first US President; his father was a successful sugar merchant. The younger Reid's early education took him for at least one year to Switzerland; he is also known to have attended and graduated from the Pennsylvania Military AcademyWidener University
Widener University is a private, coeducational university located in Chester, Pennsylvania.Its main campus sits on 108 acres , just southwest of Philadelphia...
. In 1877 Reid enrolled at the newly-founded Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
, from which he earned a B.A. in 1880 as part of the second graduating class. During the following year, he entered the Hopkins Ph.D. program, which was then revolutionizing American scientific and intellectual life. Reid studied under physicist Henry Rowland
Henry Augustus Rowland
Henry Augustus Rowland was a U.S. physicist. Between 1899 and 1901 he served as the first president of the American Physical Society...
and mathematician J. J. Sylvester, two of the original Johns Hopkins professors. In February 1885 Reid was granted his doctorate with a dissertation on the spectra of platinum, an assignment typical of those that Rowland - the pioneering figure in modern spectral studies - gave his students.
While in graduate school Reid married Edith Gittings (1861–1954). Her father, James Gittings, was descended from a long-standing Baltimore County family with strong connections to the legal and medical communities of Maryland. Her mother was Mary Elizabeth MacGill, whose father was a physician in Hagerstown, MD. Together, Reid and his wife would have two children: Francis Fielding Reid, born in 1892, and Doris Fielding Reid, born in 1895. Through the Gittings line the two Reid children were distant cousins to Wallis Warfield (born 1895-6), later Duchess of Windsor.
Through his mother, Harry Fielding Reid was a great-great-grandnephew of George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
. In addition to this social connection, the Reids were closely involved in the academic world of Baltimore, particularly figures from the “heroic” era of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, like Sir William Osler, and graduate school friends such as Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
.
Early career
From the autumn of 1884 through the early summer of 1886, Reid spent time studying and traveling across Europe. During the fall of ‘84 and winter of ‘85, he may have worked at the laboratory of Hermann von HelmholtzHermann von Helmholtz
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science...
in Berlin. His wife was with him throughout his stay, and they were joined for most of their travels by her mother, Mary Elizabeth MacGill Gittings. Mrs. Gittings left a diary, written on four small account books and now in the special collections department of the Johns Hopkins University library, that gives valuable information about their early years as a family. Among her observations was that her daughter regarded the German language as one of “sneezes and splutters.” Gittings found the wintertime climate of Berlin to be “foggy and dismal,” noted that the locals still ate dinner in mid-afternoon, and saw that some students (even visiting Americans) continued to fight duels.
During the autumn of 1885, Reid, his wife and mother-in-law settled into a rented house in Cambridge, UK, and remained there for the better part of a year. Reid was soon introduced to J. J. Thomson
J. J. Thomson
Sir Joseph John "J. J." Thomson, OM, FRS was a British physicist and Nobel laureate. He is credited for the discovery of the electron and of isotopes, and the invention of the mass spectrometer...
, a young physicist who had recently been appointed to a professorship at Trinity College and made director of the Cavendish Laboratory
Cavendish Laboratory
The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the university's School of Physical Sciences. It was opened in 1874 as a teaching laboratory....
. This friendship, both professional and personal, was to continue within the Reid and Thomson families up to the present time (2007 CE). J. J. Thomson was 29 at the time they first met; Harry Fielding Reid was 26. Letters exchanged among the various family members reflect an intimacy that was born of their very early years together.
Both J. J. Thomson and his son George Paget (1892–1975) would go on to win Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
s for their pioneering work in subatomic physics. J. J. still holds a unique place in the history of physics for his work in making the Cavendish Laboratory
Cavendish Laboratory
The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the university's School of Physical Sciences. It was opened in 1874 as a teaching laboratory....
perhaps the finest-ever school for training research physicists.
In the fall of 1886 Reid accepted an appointment at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio. He taught physics and mathematics there for eight years before being appointed an Associate at Johns Hopkins, a rank that was the equivalent of today’s Assistant Professor. For reasons not yet clear, Reid did not take the job immediately but worked for one year at the newly-founded University of Chicago. By the spring of 1896, however, he and his immediate family were back living in Baltimore for good, and they moved into a large townhouse on Cathedral Street, just a short distance from Mt. Vernon Place - then the heart of “Society” Baltimore - and the home of his parents.
Glaciology
While in Cleveland, Reid had begun to study glaciology. His interest in glaciers may have begun in childhood during trips to Switzerland, although the duration and character of such early travel is at present unknown. What is clear is that Reid eventually decided to undertake a serious study of the dynamics of glaciers, and in 1890 he organized a summertime trip to Glacier BayGlacier Bay
Glacier Bay Basin in southeastern Alaska, United States, encompasses the Glacier Bay and surrounding mountains and glaciers, which was first proclaimed a U.S. National Monument on February 25, 1925 and which was later, on Dec...
in SE Alaska. He was accompanied by several young men from the Cleveland area, most of them students, one identified as H.P. Cushing. Cushing later had a long career as a geologist and was an elder brother of the celebrated neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing. Dr. Harvey Cushing
Harvey Cushing
Harvey Williams Cushing, M.D. , was an American neurosurgeon and a pioneer of brain surgery, and the first to describe Cushing's syndrome...
would come to Baltimore in 1896 to train at the newly-founded Johns Hopkins Hospital before being chosen to head the surgery department at Brigham in Boston.
Reid’s trip to Alaska would result in his first professional publication, a long article in volume IV of the National Geographic Magazine
National Geographic Magazine
National Geographic, formerly the National Geographic Magazine, is the official journal of the National Geographic Society. It published its first issue in 1888, just nine months after the Society itself was founded...
, in those years still an academic journal. During 1892 he made a second expedition (like the first, evidently self-financed) with a small crew of hired men. Why any of the students and others from his first trip didn’t come a second time is unknown. Conditions in Alaska during that era could be at best called “pioneer,” and field scientists had no choice but to live in huts on the ice or else on camp on bare rock. The U.S. Navy sent a vessel past once each week during the warmer months, but the Glacier Bay
Glacier Bay
Glacier Bay Basin in southeastern Alaska, United States, encompasses the Glacier Bay and surrounding mountains and glaciers, which was first proclaimed a U.S. National Monument on February 25, 1925 and which was later, on Dec...
region, like most of the territory of Alaska, was otherwise a wilderness that had only had the most cursory exploration done prior to 1890. Still, Reid took a set of measurements that showed how the glaciers were moving and changing, and he proposed a theory for how the front of a glacier maintained the shape that it did. The United States Geological Survey
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology,...
(USGS) would later name one of these glaciers for him.
Seismology
After returning to Baltimore, Reid devoted his next 35 years to a career in research and teaching at Johns Hopkins. The Geology Department had been founded several years before and was then under the chairmanship of Charles Bullock Clark. Reid’s relationship with other members of his department is uncertain, and his professional identity was fluid as well. Geophysics was a new field at that time, and Reid could later fairly claim to be the first American scientist to practice it as a specialty. By 1911, and after a series of promotions, he would be granted the title Professor of Dynamic Geology and Geography.In 1902, Reid began to collect seismological data for the USGS. At that time the science of seismology was extremely new, and there were only a handful of working seismographs anywhere in the world. One was installed at the Johns Hopkins geology lab, and in 1911 Reid would publish the first comprehensive treatment on the subject in English. His interest in such measuring devices may have begun in the early 1880s with his study under Henry Rowland
Henry Augustus Rowland
Henry Augustus Rowland was a U.S. physicist. Between 1899 and 1901 he served as the first president of the American Physical Society...
, who was a path-breaking figure in the use of fine instruments to measure and assess nature at the atomic level. Reid’s British friend and colleague, J. J. Thomson, made use of a similar interest in measurement to prove the existence of the electron as a particle with both mass and charge.
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
offered Reid the chance to take his interest in seismology to a new level. Andrew Lawson
Andrew Lawson
Andrew Cowper Lawson July 25,1861- June 16,1952 was a professor of geology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the editor and co-author of the 1908 report on the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake which became known as the "Lawson Report"...
was then chair of the geology department at the University of California at Berkeley, and Lawson had been one of the first (1888) Hopkins Ph.D.s in geology. Perhaps through his influence Reid was chosen the only non-Californian to study the great earthquake as part of a state-funded commission. Through a close examination of how different points of land along the California coast and nearby inland had moved over the course of the previous half century - here his access to USGS data was crucial - Reid was able to determine that the earthquake was a result of forces he identified as “elastic strain.” This strain had built up slowly but unequally at points along the San Andreas Fault
San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental strike-slip fault that runs a length of roughly through California in the United States. The fault's motion is right-lateral strike-slip...
, and it took a massive temblor to release the strain at that point along the fault where the greatest energy had accumulated.
During the previous generation European scientists had begun to wonder if faults were related to earthquakes, and vice-versa, but it was Harry Fielding Reid who established that there was a clear and dynamic relationship. He would call his new theory “Elastic Rebound
Elastic-rebound theory
The elastic rebound theory is an explanation for how energy is spread during earthquakes. As plates on opposite sides of a fault are subjected to force and shift, they accumulate energy and slowly deform until their internal strength is exceeded...
,” and it remains even into the 21st century at the foundation of modern tectonic studies.
Recognition
Reid’s reputation was now secure as the founding father of geophysics in the Western Hemisphere. Like his old Cambridge friend J. J. Thomson, he was acknowledged as a scientist of the first rank. There wasn’t a Nobel Prize to win for geology, but Reid was elected to the National Academy of SciencesUnited States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
in 1912 and served as president of the American Geophysical Union
American Geophysical Union
The American Geophysical Union is a nonprofit organization of geophysicists, consisting of over 50,000 members from over 135 countries. AGU's activities are focused on the organization and dissemination of scientific information in the interdisciplinary and international field of geophysics...
from 1924-26. He corresponded with various European Societies concerned with glaciology and seismology, and in December 1926 he and his wife traveled to Japan as invited guests of an international conference on earthquake studies.
Personality and research style
Harry Fielding Reid’s life bridged the gap that divided the early years of modern science, when successful men like Sir Joseph BanksJoseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage . Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him,...
and Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
worked on their own or financed the work of their friends, and a later era, from the final decades of the 19th century, when government and institutional financing caused science to become better organized even as it was made into a more bureaucratic enterprise. Reid’s long trip to Europe in 1884-86 appears to have been financed by his father, or so it would appear from a letter his wife later wrote (fall 1886) to J. J. Thomson. There is also the evidence, among his surviving papers at Johns Hopkins, of an account book from Reid’s early years of collecting data for the USGS (1902–14). That account book, which mostly records small amounts for secretarial expenses and the like, implies that Reid was expecting reimbursement from the USGS. He was not, however, earning a salary. Here seems a clear illustration of the turn that scientific inquiry was taking by 1902: there was evidently no regular income involved, yet Reid was not expected to foot the bill entirely on his own. Government subsidy – also taking place at Johns Hopkins as the geology faculty did work for the Maryland State Highway Department
Maryland State Highway Administration
The Maryland State Highway Administration is the state agency responsible for maintaining Maryland numbered highways outside of Baltimore City...
after 1898 – also meant greater accountability: hence Reid’s careful recording of expenses.
Beginning in at least 1896 with the death of his father, Reid had a significant private income, at least some of which he decidated to scientific research. He was later memorialized by colleague Andrew Lawson as having been “blessed with a charming character,” that it was “always a joy to meet him.” Lawson also remarked that Reid might seem “austere” to those unknown to him, yet that was typical for the Southern elite of his day. He was a small but physically strong man, a gymnast when young and an active mountain climber through much of his long life. He is not known to have produced any Ph.D. geophysicists through the geology department at Johns Hopkins, but he did serve as an advisor to students in other fields.
Legacy
Reid’s son Francis Fielding earned an M.D. degree from the University of MarylandUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore
University of Maryland, Baltimore, was founded in 1807. It comprises some of the oldest professional schools in the nation and world. It is the original campus of the University System of Maryland. Located on 60 acres in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, it is part of the University System of Maryland...
in 1930 but apparently did not practice medicine other than during his U.S. Army career. His daughter Doris Fielding eventually gave up pursuit of music and art to work as a bond trader on Wall Street and in the U.S. Government bond market in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. She was life partner to the popular Classicist Edith Hamilton
Edith Hamilton
Edith Hamilton was an American educator and author who was "recognized as the greatest woman Classicist". She was sixty-two years old when The Greek Way, her first book, was published in 1930...
and together they raised the elder Reids' first grandchild, Francis Dorian Fielding.
Harry Fielding Reid’s sister Ellen married the celebrated poet and preacher Henry van Dyke, who was the author of dozens of books, taught English at Princeton and served as U.S. Minister to the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
during World War I. His younger brother Andrew Melville stayed in the family commodities business for some period of time but then established a second home and family in the south of France.
Reid died June 18, 1944. He and his brother Andrew, along with Edith Gittings Reid and her mother, are buried in Baltimore’s Greenmount Cemetery. Their markers are surrounded by the graves of various governors, mayors, Civil War generals and other representatives of the historic Baltimore elite. Reid continues to be recognized by geologists as one of their discipline’s founding fathers. Every year the Seismological Society of America
Seismological Society of America
The Seismological Society of America is an international society devoted to the advancement of seismology and its applications in understanding and mitigating earthquake hazards and in imaging the structure of the Earth....
recognizes a fellow scientist for having contributed that year’s finest work in seismology: their award is still named the Harry Fielding Reid Medal.