BIO: Louis E. REBER, Centre County, Pennsylvania

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Commemorative Biographical Record of Central Pennsylvania: Including the 
Counties of Centre, Clearfield, Jefferson and Clarion: Containing Biographical 
Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens, Etc. 
Chicago: J. H. Beers, 1898.
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COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD, pages 93-94

PROF. LOUIS E. REBER, M. S. The Pennsylvania State College has enlisted in its 
service a corps of instructors whose intelligence and professional skill are an 
honor to the institution, and their loyalty and devotion to her best interests 
has brought to a happy realization that noble ideal which has established, in 
the name of the Commonwealth, the means whereby the pathway to knowledge is made 
easy of access. Among those who have labored most effectively to build up the 
college, Prof. Louis E. Reber, Dean of the School of Mechanical Engineering, is 
deserving of special mention, as it is mainly to his zealous efforts that the 
department owes its foundation and steadily increasing success. 
  Prof. Reber's ancestry on both sides was of German stock; both parents, 
however, were natives of Pennsylvania, the father, Jacob Reber, born in 1809, 
and the mother, Elizabeth Ehrhart, in 18--. Their marriage occurred in Centre 
County, and here they afterward made their home, in Nittany Valley. The father 
died in 1877, and the mother in 1881. They were successful farming people. Their 
children were: Amanda, wife of John H. Beck, a farmer and merchant of Lock 
Haven, Penn.; Abigail, wife of John M. Krape, a retired merchant of Salona, 
Penn.; William F., who was the Executive clerk 

COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD - 94

of Pennsylvania under Gov. Pattison, and now a resident of Philadelphia; 
Henrietta, the wife of H. H. Walker, of Lock Haven, Penn.; Mary E., who died at 
the age of seventeen; and Louis E., our subject.
  Prof. Reber was born at Nittany, Centre County, February 27, 1858. In 1880 he 
was graduated from The Pennsylvania State College. After two years spent in 
teaching and further study at that institution, he devoted one year to 
postgraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1884 he 
returned to The Pennsylvania State College to, take charge of the department of 
Mechanic Arts. In 1886 the chair of Mechanical Engineering having been 
established, he became Professor of Mechanical Engineering, a title which, in 
connection with that of Dean of the School of Engineering, he still holds.
  Prof. Reber is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; of 
the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers; of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Society for the 
Promotion of Engineering Education. He was commissioner for the State of 
Pennsylvania to the Paris Exposition of 1889, and assistant executive 
commissioner, in charge of collecting and installing Pennsylvania's Mining 
Exhibit at the World's Fair in Chicago, and, later, judge of awards in the 
Machinery Department.