Edward Pierrepont Beckwith


Edward Pierrepont Beckwith was the son of Leonard Forbes
and Margaretta Willoughby Pierrepont Beckwith and was born in New York April 27, 1877.
Edward Pierrepont Beckwith graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1901. He
worked for General Electric, conducting some of the first experiments with tungsten as a
filament for electric lamps. Additional experimentation included working on the purification of water, iron oxydation and the use of mercury in silica tubes.
Beckwith was a member of The Explorers Club in New York. He was an observer, navigator and photographer on expeditions,
including the Carnegie Institute's Mount McKinley Cosmic Ray Expedition in 1932, the Rainbow
Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition of 1937, and the 1939-40 Fairchild Tropical Expedition in the Philippines and the Dutch East
Indies.
He appeared in Who's Who of Engineering in 1922.
Beckwith died on July 5, 1966 at the age of 89 died of a heart attack while driving his car alone.