Edwin Eugene Howell was born on March 12, 1845, in Genesee Township, near Rochester, New York.

He was an American geologist, cartographer, and pioneer of the commercial relief model in the United States. He studied at the University of Rochester and became a geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey in surveys west of the Rocky Mountains (1872-1874). Howell's relief models earned an international reputation for impeccable technique, geographic accuracy, sound construction, and overall artistry. In 1875, he created the first commercial relief model of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado (one copy hangs in Science Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison). He worked for the Smithsonian Institution, universities, natural history museums, and several presidential commissions, and was also an early authority on meteorites. Howell was one of the founders of the Geological Society of America in 1888. In his later years, he devoted his time to the manufacture of geological models and maps first in the Rochester Museum and then in his own company in Washington, D.C., called The Microcosm.

In 1884, he married Marie Huntington Williams (1853-1893). He died on April 16, 1911, in Washington, D.C.