Louis Ware:

By his own description, Louis Ware’s career was a planned one which, “with
tenacity, the help of other competent people, a good health record and, of course, a goodly
portion of luck, worked out as planned.” Following receipt of a Bachelor of Mining Engineering
degree from the University of Kentucky College of Mining Engineering in 1917, Mr. Ware
headed for the mines to become miner and underground boss for Old Dominion Copper
Company in Globe, Arizona. His plan included getting experience in all types of mining, and he
did just that. He was employed by various mining firms in Arizona gaining experience in fissure
vein mining, caving of large porphyry copper ores and open cut shovel mining. While serving as
General Mine Superintendent for Anglo-Chilean Nitrate Corporation in Chile , South America ,
Mr. Ware became acquainted with directors, bank officials and financial people who visited
there. Upon returning to the States, he did some consulting work and testified as an expert in
matters involving both caving mining and open cut mining before venturing out into the financial
world. He took a post in the Industrial Department of The New York Trust Company, which also
afforded him the opportunity to study banking and finance at New York University . He spent the
next few years bailing companies out of difficult financial situations, including the United
Electric Coal Companies, for whom he became president.
Mr. Ware decided in 1939 that he had finished his job in the coal industry and would rather be in
another field of mining. Thus came the presidency of International Agricultural Corporation, later
known as International Minerals and Chemicals Corporation (IMC). He reorganized the company
and increased sales from $10 million annually to $180 million annually with the application of
flotation to pebble phosphate rock. The corporation acquired a number of fertilizer mixing plants
which prompted a move of the corporate headquarters to Skokie , Illinois , the center of the large
Midwest potash and fertilizer consuming market. Over the years, numerous other companies
were acquired and the corporation expanded in the agricultural chemical field to become one of
the largest producers of agricultural minerals and chemicals and the nation’s largest producer of
14 commodities including phosphate, potash, and monosodium glutamate. At the time of his
retirement, he was Chairman of the Board at IMC.
Mr. Ware held memberships in numerous professional organizations and served on several
boards of directors. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree from the University
of Kentucky (1952), established the Ware Honor Loan Fund at UK to assist engineering students,
received the AIME Hal Williams Hardinge Award (1964) and the University of Kentucky
Distinguished Alumni Centennial Award (1965).
Mr. Ware was inducted into the College of Engineering Hall of Distinction in 1993.
Programs
Engineering Career Services
Hall of Distinction
Pathway of Innovation

Information provided by Leonard Smith

(Note: He was the son of Charles P. Ware and Nora Lynn Ware.  I visited with
him once during a business trip to Chicago.  He was my cousin. He sent
me copies f his father’s Ware research.   He had two sons; Robert Louis
Ware and Thomas Morrow Ware, both  deceased.  I twice visited Robert
(aka Louie) at his home in the Chicago area.  An interesting person.
During WW 2 he flew  300+ times he flew the “hump” from Burma to China
carrying troops and supplies. Louie and I wen to a copy store and I
copied his entire file.  Some of I had not seen before.  In his old age
Thomas Morrow Ware was reclusive and suspicious of strangers.  Morrow was his mother’s maiden name.
Her brother was Thomas Morrow, Governor of the Commonwealth of
Kentucky.)