Eugene Woldemar Hilgard (January 5, 1833, Zweibrücken, Kingdom of Bavaria – January 8, 1916, Berkeley, California, United States) was a German-American expert on pedology (the study of soil resources). An authority on climate as a soil forming factor, soil chemistry and reclamation of alkali soils, he is considered as the father of modern soil science in the United States.
Biography
Early life
Eugene Hilgard was born at Zweibrücken, Kingdom of Bavaria, January 5, 1833, the son of Theodore Erasmus and Margaretha (Pauli) Hilgard. His father was a successful lawyer, holding the position of chief justice of the court of appeals of the province of Rhenish Bavaria. His liberally-minded father was displeased by the increasingly reactionary government of Ludwig I, and, having secured a letter of recommendation from Lafayette, he resolved to move his family to America. After a 14-day overland trip to Le Havre, followed by a 62-day ocean voyage aboard the ship Marengo, the family arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana, on Christmas Day, 1835, then traveled up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri, finally settling on a farm in Belleville, Illinois. His father had chosen that particular area based on the writings of Gottfried Duden, who had described the area as a sort of El Dorado for German immigrants.
The youngest of nine children, Eugene received his early education under the tutelage of his father. 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. 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 U.S. Coast Survey.
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.
Education in Europe
At the University of Heidelberg, he began study under Leopold Gmelin and Theodor Ludwig Wilhelm Bischoff, but soon became disenchanted with the overall state of instruction at the university. During a summer trip with his brother Theodore to their native province, the turbulence of the Palatinate-Baden rebellion forced the pair to seek safety in Speyer, where their cousin was a government official. At his suggestion, they traveled to Switzerland and enrolled at the University of Zurich. Hilgard spent three semesters at Zurich, studying under notable professors such as Lorenz Oken, Arnold Escher von der Linth, and Carl Jacob Löwig, the latter of whom appointed him as his laboratory and teaching assistant.
In 1850 he left Zurich for the Royal Mining School in Freiberg. Despite a productive period of study under Karl Friedrich Plattner, a recurrence of his health problems, combined with two near-death experiences involving cyanide gas and mercury vapor, led him to conclude he was not cut out for the hazardous world of mining and smelting. Hilgard returned to Heidelberg in 1851, where Robert Bunsen had just succeeded Leopold Gmelin as the chair in chemistry. He soon decided to obtain a Ph.D. with Bunsen as his advisor. For his thesis, Hilgard investigated the constituent parts of a candle flame, and was the first to identify four distinct parts and processes, as opposed to the three that had previously been supposed. He received his Ph.D. in 1853.
After graduation, he lived in Spain and Portugal for two years. 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.
Hilgard's father moved back to Germany in 1855, remarried his niece Marie Theveny, and died in Heidelberg in 1873.