Henry Larcom Abbot

Henry Larcom Abbot (1831-1927) was a military engineer and officer in the United States Army.

Biography

Henry attended West Point and graduated with a degree in military engineering in 1854. He then began his sevice in the U.S. army. While serving in the Army Lt. Henry Abbot and Capt. A.A. Humphreys conducted several scientific studies of the Mississippi River. They most notably studied the Mississippi river's flow starting at the Ohio River and going southward down to its base level at the Gulf of Mexico. They attempted to use several European formulas for stream discharge they had learned at West Point, but came to discover that they were all flawed. They then developed their own formula which ultimately also proved to be faulty, most notably they forgot to account for the roughness of slopes in river canals. Although the formula was not without flaw it influenced the evolution of hydrology and was instrumental in the establishing of an United States Army Engineer School at Fort Totten, New York City. He retired as a Colonel in 1895.

References

* [http://pdftohtml.spiritofanime.com/pdf2html.php?url=http://www.usace.army.mil/publications/eng-pamphlets/ep870-1-37/c-4.pdf Article on Abbot and Humphreys]
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=20305 Find a Grave article]

External links

* [http://virtualology.com/henrylarcomabbot/ Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889 ]