Howard Earle Petch, OBC FRSC (12 May 1925 – 26 November 2018[1]) was a Canadian academic administrator.
He received a Bachelor of Science, honours in physics and chemistry from McMaster University in 1949.
From 1958 to 1961 he was the chairman of the department of metallurgical engineering and was the Director of Research from 1961 to 1963.
In 1967, he became the Vice-President (academic) and a Professor of physics at the University of Waterloo.
The Petch building at the University of Victoria, which houses the department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, was named in his honour.