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 CHARLES EDWARD MUNROE UNROE, CHARLES EDWARD, professor of chemistry, assay commissioner, inventor of "navy smokeless powder," and dean of the Corcoran scientific school, Washington, and of the School of Graduate Studies, Columbian (now George Washington) university, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 24, 1849. He is descended from old colonial stock. William Munroe, his earliest known ancestor on this side of the water, settled in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1652; and no less than twenty of his ancestral connections were engaged in the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775, in front of the house of one of his forefathers. His father, Enoch Munroe, a carriage builder, was an upright, capable but retiring man, and though repeatedly nominated for office could never be prevailed upon to accept public service. Of his mother, her son says: "Asa lad I regarded her as the best balanced and truest being that I knew, and I still so believe."

At fourteen he had chosen his profession of chemistry and was studying it. No regular tasks involving manual labor were imposed upon him, but from preference he found them and carried them on diligently. Concerning his collegiate course he says, "I believe my parents could not have furnished me a college education if I had not, while in the primary school, become to a large degree self-supporting." The Cambridge public and high schools gave him his preparatory course, and he was graduated from the Lawrence scientific school of Harvard university in 1871, with the degree of B.S., summa cum laude.

He pursued a course of post-graduate study at Harvard, for the degree of Sc.D., which was interrupted by his removal to the naval academy. He received the degree of Ph.D. from the Columbian university in 1894. He began his active labor in his chosen department in Harvard university as a private assistant to Professor Gibbs. He was assistant in chemistry in Harvard college, teaching quantitative analysis and chemical technology to seniors in the college, and wet assaying in the Lawrence scientific school, 1871-74, as well as all