author
Hudson Maxim
1853–1927
Best known for developing smokeless gunpowder and other powerful explosives, this restless American inventor also wrote widely on science, war, and public affairs. His life sits at the crossroads of ingenuity, industry, and the uneasy moral questions that come with invention.
2 Audiobooks
Defenseless America
by Hudson Maxim
Dynamite Stories, and Some Interesting Facts About Explosives
by Hudson Maxim
About the author
Born in Maine in 1853, Hudson Maxim became an American inventor, chemist, and writer whose work helped shape modern explosives. Reliable reference sources agree that he is especially associated with smokeless gunpowder and other munitions developments, and that his inventions were used extensively in the years around World War I.
He was part of a notably inventive family: sources describe him as the brother of Hiram Maxim, inventor of the Maxim gun, and the uncle of Hiram Percy Maxim. Beyond laboratory and industrial work, he also wrote books and essays on science, literature, politics, and war, which helped make him a public figure as well as an inventor.
Maxim died in 1927 in New Jersey. Today he is remembered less as a single-purpose technician than as a vivid, wide-ranging personality whose career linked chemistry, engineering, publishing, and public debate.