Harvey Seeley Mudd, for whom Harvey Mudd College was named, was born in Leadville, Colorado, in 1888 and died in Los Angeles in 1955. A friend has described him as "one of the most humble, most fortunate and most successful men of modern times...a thinker, a patient builder and a self-reliant scholar."

A mining engineer, he was a graduate of Stanford and Columbia universities. He served with distinction as president of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers. With his father, he founded and later became president of Cyprus Mines, Corp., whose Los Angeles-based international enterprises started with development of the copper mines on the island of Cyprus.

Harvey Mudd was a director of the Southern Pacific Company, of the Texas Gulf Sulphur Company and of the Founders Fire and Marine Insurance Company. He was a founding director of the RAND Corporation. He was a trustee of the California Institute of Technology, a director of the Hospital of The Good Samaritan and a trustee of the Southwest Museum. For 12 years, he was president of the Southern California Symphony Association. For nine of those years, he was chairman of its board.

He had a particular interest in The Claremont Colleges and served as chairman of the Board of Fellows of Claremont College, now The Claremont Graduate University, for a quarter of a century. While serving in that position, he helped to plan the undergraduate college of science and engineering that was chartered in 1955, shortly after his death.

With the backing of Harvey Mudd's friends and family, the new college was founded later that year and named in his memory and honor. This new college would award degrees in science and engineering, but require a breadth of understanding in the humanities and the social sciences. This was a daring move, one the founders felt was necessary so that graduates would "understand the impact of their work on society," an objective they incorporated directly into the colleges mission statement.