Henry Townley Heald (1904–1975) was the first president of Illinois Institute of Technology and the Ford Foundation.
Heald was president of Armour Institute of Technology from 1937 to 1940, at which time it became the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT); he served as its president until 1952.
[1] He is credited with bringing architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to Chicago in 1938 to direct IIT's architecture program.
[2] He led a team that investigated the idea of a research institute on the west coast and made proposals that would result in the creation of SRI International.
In 1959, Heald was awarded the Hoover Medal, which recognizes civic and humanitarian achievements by engineers.