Edmund Otis Hovey

Edmund Otis Hovey was not only a high scientific expert, but a bold and untiring geological investigator at close range. He dropped all his work at the Museum of Natural History when the news arrived of the volcanic eruption of Mont Pelée, and left for Martinique on a few hours’ notice to see the phenomenon face to face. He headed the expedition of 1915 to rescue the stranded MacMillan party in the Arctic, expecting to be absent only a few months, with the result that his party was itself frozen in and did not emerge to civilization until 1917. In these present days of long-distance radio achievement, the two-years’ enforced vacation in the frozen North might have been passed in conference with his colleagues of the Museum or in listening to Lucrezia Bori or crossword puzzles at WEAF New York—so completely has the wireless transmission destroyed the seclusion of the waste places of the earth. But Dr. Hovey was content to spend 1915 in the Arctic without a radio, and he came back in a sledge over a thousand miles of ice with a sheaf of geological discoveries, just in time to learn that the United States had gone to war with Germany.

Dr. Hovey was an incessant writer and worker, genial and kindly in temperament and with many friends, in and out of his profession.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1925 Century Association Yearbook