Who was Edward Howard?
Edward Howard was an English chemist who, in 1802, showed that stones from different falls were similar to each other and contained nickel, unlike Earth rocks.
Edward Charles Howard (1774 to 1816) was an English chemist and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He made important contributions to chemistry, including work on explosive compounds and on refining sugar.
Meteorites. In the 1790s, there was debate about whether stones really fell from the sky. Howard decided to study the stones scientifically. Working with the French mineralogist Jacques-Louis de Bournon, he examined stones from several reported falls, including Wold Cottage in Yorkshire, which fell in 1795, and falls in Italy, India and Bohemia.
Discoveries. In 1802, Howard published the results in the Royal Society's journal. He found that the stones from different falls were remarkably similar. They contained round grains, which we now call chondrules, metallic iron, a sulfide of iron and an earthy matrix. Crucially, he found that the metal contained nickel. He also showed that iron masses believed to have fallen from the sky contained nickel. This was strong evidence that these objects shared a common, non-terrestrial origin, because nickel-bearing metallic iron was not known in Earth rocks.
Impact. Howard's work, along with the fall at L'Aigle in 1803, helped convince the scientific community that meteorites were real.
Honour. The meteorite type howardite is named after him. This website takes its name from that group of meteorites, which come from the asteroid Vesta.
Howard's careful chemistry showed how laboratory evidence can settle scientific debates.