• Hours
• Facilities Overview
• Reservations Calendar:
  Study Rooms and
  Data Projector
• Reservations Calendar:
  Wildman Computing Lab
• Who We Are

 

Ernest Atkins Wildman

Earnest Atkins Wildman is the man for whom the Wildman Science Library of Earlham College is named. He graduated from Earlham in 1912 and proceeded to the University of Illinois where he received his doctorate in chemistry. Wildman worked as a research chemist before returning to Earlham College in 1919 to teach. His career as Professor of Chemistry, and later Professor of Soil Science, continued until his retirement in 1955. Wildman was an active Quaker who, as a conscientious objector during World War II, was Director of the first Civilian Public Service Camp at Patapsco, Maryland. Wildman remained an active Quaker throughout his life.

Excerpts from
ERNEST ATKINS WILDMAN: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
by George A. Scherer

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• CHILDHOOD
• COLLEGE YEARS AND GRADUATE STUDIES
• MARRIAGE AND EARLY FAMILY LIFE
• RESEARCH CHEMIST
• CHEMISTRY TEACHER AT EARLHAM
• QUAKER LIFE IN RICHMOND
• A PACIFIST IN WORLD WAR II
• IN SUPPORT OF CONSUMER COOPERATIVES
• FROM CHEMIST TO AGRICULTURAL SCIENTIST
• LATER FAMILY LIFE AND RETIREMENT YEARS

CHILDHOOD

Ernest Wildman was born on July 2,1889 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but lived most of his childhood years near the ancestral Wildman farm in Selma, Ohio. His scientific aptitude was displayed early. He experimented with electricity in his little shop, and accompanied his parents to fascinating demonstrations of liquid air, radium, wireless telegraph, and x-ray, then all recent discoveries. During a two year family move to Springfield, Missouri, Ernest completed high school at Drury Academy in 1908. It was here that his interest in chemistry was stimulated.

COLLEGE YEARS AND GRADUATE STUDIES

When Ernest entered Earlham in 1908, the total charge for tuition, room, and board was $75 for each of three terms. Even so, Ernest found it necessary to work at a number of part time jobs to be able to continue his study of chemistry. By the time he graduated in 1912, he had already received a graduate assistantship for $300 a year at the University of Illinois, and waiver of tuition and lab fees. He earned his M.S. degree in June 1914 and started on toward a Ph.D. But employment in research positions delayed his receiving that degree until 1922.

MARRIAGE AND EARLY FAMILY LIFE

Edith Edwards was a 1912 classmate of Ernest's at Earlham, but they did not date until she came to the University of Illinois in 1914 to do graduate study in Home Economics. They were married on June 24, 1916 at First Friends Church in Indianapolis. They had two children, William Edwards (Bill) Wildman (EC '48), and Dorothy Frances (Dotty) Wildman (EC '47). Bill married Ruth Ann Irvin and they have four children, Richard, Nancy (EC '77), Jean, and Ann (EC '83). Dotty married Eugene (Gene) Sumner Mills (EC '48 and interim President of Earlham College, 1996-1997), and they have two children, David and Sara.

RESEARCH CHEMIST

In late 1914, Ernest and Dr. Lambert Thorp synthesized and patented several new local anesthetics to replace novocaine, then unavailable from Germany because of World War I. Patents were assigned to Park, Davis and Co. and one of these was marketed under the trade name, Apothesine. It was a more powerful anesthetic than novocaine, but also more irritating. In 1916, Ernest took a position with Eli Lilly and Co. While there he developed an anesthetic that was superior both to novocaine and apothesine. The patent was assigned to Park, Davis and Co. through an arrangement with Lilly. Because of promotional expense and reavailability of novocaine, it was never marketed.

CHEMISTRY TEACHER AT EARLHAM

Ernest became Professor of Chemisty at Earlham in 1919, a title he would hold until 1950. He was an innovative teacher who wrote his own textbook in order to present the subject as he thought best. He used the newly developed concepts of atomic structure, valence, acids and bases, and complete ionization of strong electrolytes as the basic framework around which the science of chemistry was built. Originally mimeographed, his textbook came out in lithoprinted form in 1946. Ernest took pride in his many students who went on to productive careers in chemical and medical research and teaching.

QUAKER LIFE IN RICHMOND

While a sophomore at Earlham in 1909, Ernest became a charter member of West Richmond Friends Meeting. Not content with the traditional Sunday School format, he was instrumental in setting up an adult forum for the consideration of practical social issues which arose from the historic Quaker testimonies. He remained active in the affairs of the meeting for many years, but in later life moved his membership to the Clear Creek Meeting on the Earlham campus where the unprogrammed meeting seemed more satisfying to him.

A PACIFIST IN WORLD WAR II

Ernest was not called on to serve in the military forces in either World War. However, his pacifist beliefs would not allow him to remain oblivious to either one. In World War I, he refused to buy war stamps to meet his company quota, because it appeared to be a direct participation in the war effort. In World War II, he was selected to be Director of the first Civilian Public Service Camp at Patapsco, Maryland. At this and many other CPS camps over the nation, conscientious objectors performed work of national importance -- soil conservation, firefighting, reforestation, mental hospital work, and much more -- under civilian, not military, direction.

IN SUPPORT OF CONSUMER COOPERATIVES

Ernest was introduced to the Coorperative Movement by one of his students, Kenneth Ives. In 1937, they and 20 other persons founded the Richmond Consumer Co-op. It began as a buying club and eventually grew into a full time grocery. Ernest became active in a summer educational and recreational camp sponsored by midwestern Co-ops and called Circle Pines Center. He felt strongly that the Cooperative Movement was an inherent part of a pacifist way of life. He was able to convince the American Friends Service Committee that they should hold two work camps at Circle Pine Center to introduce young people to the social aspects of Cooperatives. Ernest and Edith directed these work camps in the summers of 1940 and 1941.

FROM CHEMIST TO AGRICULTURAL SCIENTIST

During the 1940's, Ernest's interest increasingly turned toward agriculture. Partly because of an interest in soil conservation, and partly because of a feeling that World War II might force a subsistence livelihood, he bought a badly eroded farm in 1941. Over the years, he and his family healed the gullies, built up the farm's productivity, and were blessed with a good way of life in the process. He began to feel that Earlham should do more to encourage students to settle in or return to rural communities and engage in agricultural production or related activities. He and other faculty developed a curriculum in agricultural science, and for the last five years of his teaching career, Ernest assumed the title of Professor of Soil Chemistry.

LATER FAMILY LIFE AND RETIREMENT YEARS

Ernest retired from Earlham in 1955, but continued his close associations with faculty and students. He also worked hard to improve the farm which for several years had been entirely devoted to growing alfalfa hay, a prime conservation and soil building crop. He mowed, raked, and baled hay from the 60 tillable acres by himself, and only required help -- from a museum director and a sociology professor, among others -- for loading and stacking the hay bales.

Ernest and Edith found time to take a long anticipated trip to Europe, and also visited their children and grandchildren who, by 1958, were all living in California. Edith died in 1960 and left a large gap in Ernest's life. He eventually filled it by marrying Wilma Reeve, an Earlham classmate and long a good friend of Ernest and Edith. Ernest died quietly in 1966, and Wilma followed in 1973.

********************

George A. Scherer, the author of ERNEST ATKINS WILDMAN: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH was an undergraduate student of Wildman at Earlham College from 1923 to 1927. The professor's influence led Scherer to graduate study in chemisty -- first at Cornell University resulting in a Master of Science degree and later at Purdue University leading to a Doctor of Philosophy degree. After teaching at Pacific College and McKendree College, Scherer returned to his alma mater as a colleague of Ernest Wildman. This relationship continued for 21 fruitful years.