Eugene W. Hilgard
Eugene W. Hilgard | |
---|---|
Soil Science | |
Institutions | University of Mississippi University of Michigan University of California, Berkeley |
Doctoral advisor | Robert Bunsen |
Eugene Woldemar Hilgard (January 5, 1833 – January 8, 1916) was a
Biography
Early life
Hilgard was born at
The youngest of nine children,[4] Eugene received his early education under the tutelage of his father.[5] During an epidemic of malaria that killed his eldest sister, Eugene was stricken as well, and the resultant fevers and impaired eyesight plagued him for the next several years of his young adulthood.[6] His mother died in 1842, leaving Eugene's care in the hands of his remaining sisters. He educated himself in the fields of botany, chemistry, and physics, but his continued precarious health led doctors to suggest a change in climate, so in 1848 he traveled to Washington, D.C., with his eldest brother Julius, who was returning to his job at the United States Coast Survey.[7]
Eugene spent four months in Washington, meeting through his brother such noted scientists as Joseph Henry, Spencer Fullerton Baird, and Alexander Dallas Bache. That fall he went to Philadelphia to attend a variety of lectures, and during a visit to the laboratory of James Curtis Booth at the Franklin Institute, it was suggested that he return to Germany to study analytical chemistry. He sailed from New York in March 1849 aboard the steamship Hermann, bound for Bremen and then to Heidelberg to rejoin his brother Theodore, who had gone there in 1846 to study medicine.[7]
Education in Europe
At the
In 1850 he left Zurich for the
After graduation, he lived in Spain and Portugal for two years.[10] While in Spain, he met his future wife, Jesusa Alexandrina Bello, the daughter of a colonel in the Spanish Army. He married her in 1860 during a subsequent visit to Spain.[1]
Hilgard's father moved back to Germany in 1855, remarried his niece Marie Theveny, and died in Heidelberg in 1873.[11]
Professional career
Returning to America, he served as assistant state geologist of Mississippi from 1855 to 1857; was chemist in charge of the laboratory of the Smithsonian Institution, and lecturer on chemistry in the National Medical College (now part of George Washington University), 1857–1858; state geologist of Mississippi from 1858 to 1866, and professor of chemistry at the University of Mississippi and state geologist from 1866 to 1873. Hilgard was appointed as custodian of the University of Mississippi's buildings for the duration of the Civil War. Under his custodianship, many of the university's buildings were used as hospitals for Union and Confederate soldiers. Some Sisters of Mercy from Vicksburg traveled to Oxford to serve as nurses in these makeshift hospitals.
In 1873 he accepted an appointment at the
He conducted the agricultural division of the Northern Transcontinental Survey, 1881–1883, and made a specialty of the study of soils of the southwestern states and of the Pacific slope in their relation to geology, to their chemical and physical composition, to their native flora, and to their agricultural qualities. He was elected to a membership in the
Commemoration and honors
- Hilgard Hall on the University of California, Berkeley campus
- Streets named after him in Berkeley, Los Angeles and Davis.
- The Hilgard Cut, a railroad cut on the campus of the University of Mississippi, designed by Hilgard in 1858[12]
- The mineral hilgardite
- The U.S. SS Eugene W. Hilgard
- Hilgard received the degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Mississippi in 1882, from the University of Michigan in 1887, and from Columbia Universityin 1887.
- In 1903, the University of Heidelberg reconferred the title of Doctor of Philosophy after fifty years, in recognition of the scientific work accomplished since the doctorate was first conferred in 1853.
- The journal Hilgardia (published from 1925 to 1995) was named in his honor.
- Hilgard, Oregon
- Mount Hilgard, a mountain in California's Sierra Nevada
Publications
He published a report on the agriculture and geology of Mississippi (1860); on the Geology of
- (1860) Report on the geology and agriculture of the State of Mississippi
- (1884) Report on the Physical and Agricultural Features of the State of California, with a discussion of the present and future of cotton production in the state.
- (1885) The Phylloxera at Berkeley
- (1892) The Relation of Soils to Climate
- (1906) Soils, Their Formation, Properties, Composition, and Relations to Climate and Plant Growth in the Humid and Arid Regions
Citations
- ^ a b Wickson 1916, p. 5
- ^ Slate 1918, p. 96
- ^ Koerner 1909, p. 275
- ^ Loughridge 1916, p. 21
- ^ Hilgard 1893, pp. 329–330
- ^ JSTOR, Hilgard, Eugene Woldemar (1833-1916)
- ^ a b Slate 1918, pp. 98–100
- ^ Slate 1918, pp. 100–102
- ^ Slate 1918, pp. 102–104
- ^ White 1909
- ^ Baecker & Englemann 1958, p. 87 cited in Krafft
- ^ StoppingPoints.com 2010
- ^ Hugget 1991 "The role of climate as a soil forming factor was recognized independently in the United States ... by ... Hilgard carried out extensive studies of soils which led him to appreciate that different soils tend to be associated with different environmental conditions. In his monograph on The Relation of Soils to Climate he wrote of a more or less intimate relation between soils of a region and the prevailing climatic conditions, and in his book Soils he recorded the tendency of climate materially to influence the character of soils formed from the same rocks."
References
- Baecker, Gertrud; Englemann, Fritz (1958), Die Kurpfalzischen Familien Englemann und Hilgard, Ludwigshafen am Rhein: Richard Louis Verlag
- "Hilgard Cut", StoppingPoints.com, July 5, 2010, retrieved 2018-10-19
- Hilgard, Eugene W. (1893), "Memoir of Julius Erasmus Hilgard 1825-1890", in National Academy of Sciences (ed.), Biographical Memoirs, vol. III, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press (published 1895), pp. 327–338
- "Hilgard, Eugene Woldemar (1833-1916) on JSTOR". plants.jstor.org. Retrieved 2021-07-23.
- Hinsdale, Burke A. (1906), Demmon, Isaac (ed.), History of the University of Michigan, University of Michigan, pp. 248–249
- Jenny, Hans (1961) E.W. Hilgard and the birth of modern soil science. Pisa, Italy. 144 pp., illus
- Hugget, R. J. (1991), Climate, Earth Processes and Earth History, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag Berlin, p. 112, ISBN 978-3642762703
- Koerner, Gustave P. (1909), McCormack, Thomas J. (ed.), Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, 1809-1896, vol. I, Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press
- Krafft, Dean, Krafft Family, retrieved 2008-07-08
- Langenheim, Ralph L. (1990). "Hilgard, Eugene Woldemar". American National Biography. Vol. 10. Oxford University Press.
- Loughridge, R.H. (1916), "The Life-Work of Professor Hilgard", in University of California Agricultural Experiment Station (ed.), In Memoriam. Eugene Woldemar Hilgard, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 21–31
- Pittman, Walter E. (1985). "Eugene W. Hilgard and Scientific Education in Mississippi". Earth Sciences History. 4 (1): 26–31. JSTOR 24138437.
- Slate, Frederick (1918), "Biographical Memoir of Eugene Woldemar Hilgard 1833-1916" (PDF), in National Academy of Sciences(ed.), Biographical Memoirs, vol. IX, Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences (published 1919), pp. 95–155
- White, James T. (1909), The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, New York: J.T. White, p. 308
- Wickson, E.J. (1916), "Address", in University of California Agricultural Experiment Station (ed.), In Memoriam. Eugene Woldemar Hilgard, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 3–21
External links
- The E. W. Hilgard Collection (MUM00569) can be found at the University of Mississippi, Archive and Special Collections.