Henry Howard Paine went to school at the Newport High School in Monmouthshirel, Wales, and continued his education at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth. In 1905 he moved to the University of Cambridge and after graduating worked in the Cavendish Laboratory under Sir J.J. Thomson. In 1908 he published his first paper, in collaboration with W.C.D. Dampier and others, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. It dealt with the electrolytic conductivity of diluted sulphuric acid. By 1914 he had returned to the University College of Wales to teach physics. Meanwhile he had published several papers on colloids during 1911-1914, some in German journals, based on his work in the Cavendish Laboratory. His academic career was interrupted by World War I (1914-1918) when he joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in 1914. Later he was transferred to the Royal Engineers in France for research on sound ranging. He held the rank of Captain and was awarded the Military Cross.
Paine came to the Johannesburg University College (from 1922 the University of the Witwatersrand) in February 1920 to take up an appointment as professor of physics (succeeding Professor Alexander Ogg*) and was followed a few months later by G.T.R. Evans*, who became a lecturer in his department. They were both dedicated teachers of physics (to science, engineering and medical students) and had a heavy teaching load that left little time for research. Paine remained head of the Department of Physics until his retirement in 1946, when Evans succeeded him in that position. They managed to publish a joint paper on the study of colloids in 1924. Subsequently Paine produced some further papers on "Cataphoresis in copper oxide sols" (1928), "Debye and Hückel's theory of ionic mobility" (1932) and the settling of the particles of a colloidal solution (1938). After his retirement the University appointed him as an honorary research professorial fellow. He published two extensive papers on "Electrophoresis in copper oxide sols" in the Proceedings of the Faraday Society in 1955 and 1958. His last paper, "The density of the particles of a copper hydrosol", appeared in the South African Journal of Science in 1968. He remained a teacher in the Department of Physics until a few years before his death.
Paine also wrote some more general scientific articles, for example, on the discovery of electro-magnetic waves by Hertz (South African Journal of Science, 1938), the splitting of the atom (Ibid, 1939), and cosmic rays (South African Journal of Chemistry (1962). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa in 1925. He served as president of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in 1947 and was a member of the Controlling Executive of the Associated Scientific and Technical Societies of South Africa. In 1929 he was joint local secretary of Section A (mathematical and physical sciences) of the British Association for the Advancement of Science when it met jointly with its South African counterpart in South Africa. The University of the Witwatersrand awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree in 1972. In the cultural sphere he served on the executive council of the Johannesburg Musical Society, was chairman of the governing body of the Parktown Boys' High School, and a member of the Book Selection Committee of the Johannesburg Public Library. He was a kindly person, but also very sensitive and shy with students. He had a strong interest in the history of physics and chemistry in the United Kingdom and left a collection of books in this field, with a considerable sum of money, to the university's library. His books formed the nucleus of what became the H.H. Paine collection.
