Boston Globe Obituary July 14, 2008

Jack Howard; MIT Professor guided by both Science; Faith

As tilling the soil of a Kentucky tobacco farm as a child gave way to cultivating the fields of chemical engineering at MIT as an adult, Jack B.Howard kept sight of the source of his good fortune." He felt that everything that had happened to him his whole life was a gift, a gift from God," Carolyn Howard said of her husband, who never felt compelled to choose, as many do, between science and religion. "The spiritual side of him was something that was extremely important to him. He was a devout Christian and it was really, really important to him that we express to people our Christianity."

A man of science and a man of faith, Dr. Howard walked an improbable path from a farmhouse with a dirt floor to founding Nano-C, a biotech company for which he also chaired the board of directors. He died of brain cancer on July 7 in the MIT Infirmary, a short walk from the buildings where he had taught and conducted research. Dr. Howard was 70 and had lived in Winchester for 35 years. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he arrived as a Ford Foundation fellow for postdoctoral research in 1965, Dr. Howard was the first to hold the Hoyt C. Hottel chair of chemical engineering. Retiring as professor emeritus in 2002, he founded Nano-C, a Westwood firm that develops nanostructured carbon products, including fullerenes, carbon molecules that have a shape similar to the geodesic domes popularized by Buckminster Fuller. From Fuller the molecules draw their name -Buckminsterfullerenes, or buckyballs for short.

Decades ago before discovering a way to more efficiently manufacture microscopic buckyballs, which are expected to have pharmaceutical andindustrial uses, Dr. Howard's first experiments were more basic."His father let each of the children have their own crop," his wife said,"and he grew watermelons."

Born in Kentucky, just north of the Tennessee border, Dr. Howard lived on a farm outside Tompkinsville, a city of about 2,600. While he was growing up, the farmhouse accumulated modern amenities, his wife said, but initially it was "a very simple abode - no running water, no electricity, no telephones, and a dirt floor. And they only went to school October to April because it was farm country. You had harvest in the fall and plant in the spring." Through eighth grade, Dr. Howard attended a one-room schoolhouse, and he didn't take his first science class until enrolling at the University of Kentucky. He majored in mining engineering and graduated in 1960, then finished a master's in the same subject a year later. Offered scholarships to Penn State and Stanford universities, he chose the former because it was closer to home, and graduated with a doctorate in 1965.

At MIT, he rose to full professor and was one of the specialists consulted for the Globe's "How and Why" feature, answering questions from readers on subjects ranging from the heat of flames to why many people lick the tip of a pencil before writing. "If the lead were truly graphite, then wetting it would probably not make a difference," he told the Globe in 1993, but in pencil lead "the graphite is actually a mix of graphite and some clays. My observation is that wetting the pencil allows you to get a darker line. There's a softening of the material, some absorption of moisture into pore spaces that makes a mix that will rub off more easily."Such musings were a small part of his scientific output, which included many patents and scores of publications. In 1992, he was awarded the Bernard Lewis Gold Medal from the Combustion Institute, an international, nonprofit scientific organization based in Pittsburgh for which he served as a director."This thing was on a shelf in a cabinet," his wife said of the medal. "All of his awards were."

Of more importance was family. He married Carolyn Butler in January 1969 and they had two children. Despite the demands of work, he set aside time to read to his children each evening. "Even though he rose to the pinnacle of academia, he always was home for supper, unless he was traveling," his wife said. "And we never were allowed to answer the phone during dinner. It was truly family time." Dr. Howard's family members kept a blog during his illness, charting the medical journey and the sustenance he and his wife took in their faith.

"Even until the very end, my dad appreciated all things symmetrical,orderly, and mathematic," his son, Jonathan, of Somerville, wrote on July 7."He died today at 70 years old, at 11:05 a.m. (1 + 1 + 5 = 7) on the seventh day of the seventh month of the year."Since boyhood on the farm, Dr. Howard had loved the sound of rain in the evening, which signaled a respite from certain chores the following day. "I like to think that at this moment he is on a farm somewhere beyond our consciousness, serenaded at night by a gentle rain on a tin roof," his son wrote the day Dr. Howard died, "and in the morning will be working heavenly soil with his brother and his dad, a family slowly reuniting in a place more perfect than this one."

In addition to his wife and son, Dr. Howard leaves a daughter, Courtenay, of Winchester; his mother, Opal, of Lexington, Ky.; two sisters, Myra Bushong and Bess Abney, both of Lexington, Ky.; and a brother, Keith, of Cookeville,Tenn. A memorial service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday in Park Street Church in Boston. A private burial will be held in Skaggs Creek Cemetery, not far from the farm where Dr. Howard grew up.