page_title: Eugene W. Hilgard
section_title: Professional career
hierarchical_section_title: Eugene W. Hilgard / Biography / Professional career
caption_attribution_description: Eugene Woldemar Hilgard, Prof. Agriculture &amp; Botany
context_page_description: Eugene Woldemar Hilgard was a German-American expert on pedology. An authority on climate as a soil forming factor, soil chemistry and reclamation of alkali soils, he is considered the father of modern soil science in the United States.
context_section_description: 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. During the Civil War, Hilgard was appointed as the custodian of the University of Mississippi's buildings for the duration of the 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 University of Michigan, where he was Professor of Mineralogy, Geology, Zoology, and Botany for two years. From 1875 to 1904 he was Professor of Agricultural Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the State Agricultural Experiment Station.
  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 National Academy of Sciences in 1872.
  He published a report on the Agriculture and Geology of Mississippi (1860); on the Geology of Louisiana and the Rock-salt Deposits of Petite Anse Island (1869); reports on the Experimental Work of the College of Agriculture, University of California (1877-1898); Report on the Arid Regions of the Pacific Coast (1887); and monographs on Mississippi, Louisiana, and California, in the Report on Cotton Production of the United States Census Report of 1880, which he edited. He prepared for the United States Weather Bureau in 1892 a discussion of the Relations of Climate to Soils, which was translated into several European languages and gained for the author in 1894, from the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the Liebig medal for important advances in agricultural science. Together with his book Soils (1906), Climate... established the basis for understanding climate as a factor of soil formation in the United States. He also published numerous papers on chemical, geological, and agricultural subjects, in government reports, and in scientific journals both at home and abroad.
caption: Hilgard as Professor at Berkeley
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