Henry Fowler was an American lawyer and public official who served as secretary of the treasury under President Lyndon Johnson during a critical period of the 1960s. Born in Roanoke, Virginia, he graduated from Roanoke College and Yale Law School and began his career as a government lawyer during the New Deal, working on the legal staff of agencies created to combat the Great Depression.
During the Second World War he held important posts overseeing economic mobilization and the management of vital war production, gaining a reputation as a capable administrator. After the war he moved between government service and private law practice, building expertise in finance and economic policy.
Fowler joined the Treasury Department in the Kennedy administration and rose to become secretary of the treasury in 1965. In that role he grappled with the economic strains of the era — financing both the Vietnam War and Johnson's ambitious Great Society social programs, while struggling to defend the value of the dollar and shore up the international monetary system established at Bretton Woods.
He was a strong advocate of international monetary cooperation and played a part in efforts to reform the global financial order and ease the pressures on the dollar. After leaving office in 1968 he returned to the world of finance, working as an investment banker. He died in 2000, remembered as a steady steward of the nation's finances in a turbulent time.