Henry Alexander Neville is the only Lehigh faculty member ever elected president of the university.

Neville received his master’s and doctoral degrees from Princeton University. He taught chemistry at Princeton and the University of Illinois before joining Lehigh in 1927. Neville served as head of Lehigh’s department of chemistry and chemical engineering degree program, and in 1951 he began to organize a formal chemical engineering department. A dedicated supporter of research at Lehigh, Neville also increased funding from the National Science Foundation in nearly every science and engineering department. Prior to his presidency, Neville served as director of the Institute for Research, dean of the graduate school and university provost.

Neville’s 1961-1964 tenure oversaw the completion of the first phase of the Saucon Valley athletic complex (now Goodman Campus), the opening of Sayre Field and the establishment of the Center for Information and Computing Science. He died in 1983.