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Dedication to S.A. Wilde
S. A. Wilde:
The Man and his Message
The following is an excerpt from Dr.
Davey's talk at the 1997 SSSA meeting
by:
C. B. Davey
Carl Alwin Schenck Professor Emeritus
Department of Forestry
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695
Introduction
How to introduce the man? Winston
Churchill gives us a statement which we
might paraphrase. In 1939, Sir Winston said
in a broadcast to the British people, "I
cannot forecast to you the action of Russia.
It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside
an enigma." The paraphrase might go
something like this-No one could have
forecast to you the actions of the Russian,
S. A. Wilde. He was a riddle wrapped in a
mystery inside an enigma. He was a man of
many talents as we shall see in this
dedicatory presentation.
The origins
Sergei Alexandrovitch (son of Alexander)
Wilde was born in Moscow in 1898. He was the
child of Tartar and Dutch ancestry (hence
the family name). His childhood home was
about a mile from the Kremlin.
Unfortunately, his father died when Sergei
was only 4 years old. He grew up in a home
filled with many influences, including a
series of schools, music lessons, student
boarders of a wide range of political
persuasions including some revolutionary
activists, poetry and literature, pleasant
times with young women musicians, one of
whom he described as having "well expressed
topographic features," and his exploring and
fishing along the banks of the Moscow River.
He came to know and love the boreal forest
as the result of spending summers on the
estate of a family friend. The land was
described as "wild and worthless" because
birch grew in profusion. This love of the
forest lasted his entire life.
Education and the wars
Sergei graduated from the Imperial
Engineering College in Moscow and then
became an officer in the Trans-Amurian Horse
Artillery, a portion of the Tsar's armed
forces.
Photo #1 Sergei in his uniform
During World War 1 he was wounded three
times and received several medals, including
the Order of Saint George. He was always
proud of having been a cavalryman and though
he seldom spoke of his experiences, he did
share with some of us his description of
what he called the last great cavalry charge
which wiped out an artillery regiment.
As the Bolshevik Revolution began to
engulf the Russian Empire, the army began
the practice of electing its officers.
Sergei was elected senior commander of his
battery-which he always attributed to the
fact that he had helped rescue the units
field kitchen, during an earlier retreat.
The exile and a doctorate
After being caught in the ebb and flow of
the revolution, Sergei managed to land in
Prague where he again became a student. This
time it was in Forest Engineering. He
learned another language (Czech.) and
graduated Cum Laude in 1925. This education
included extensive field work and provided
an introduction to the laboratory aspects of
the science.
Photo #2 - Sergei with a lab coat on
He reported that in Prague in the mid
1920s, chemistry was taught as "a completed
science," meaning there was nothing more to
learn. Work for a professor, appraising
forest stands and soils, kindled a lifelong
interest in this aspect of the field.
In addition to his education, he
continued in his pursuit of art, literature,
music, good food and drink, and attractive
women. In 1928, he received the degree of
Doctor of Technical Science. That is very
ironic. If there ever was a philosopher, it
was S. A. Wilde, yet he received the Doctor
of Technical Science, while many of us
technicians received the Doctor of
Philosophy degree.
Arriving in
America
Jobs
and the Depression
Following receipt of his doctorate,
Sergei received permission to immigrate to
the United States. He studied English and
arrived at Ellis Island in May of 1929, just
5 months before the Stock Market crash and
the beginning of the Great Depression. After
having seen the Russian economy collapse and
then the democracies doing likewise, it is
no wonder that he never had much confidence
in money. He often said that it was his
objective to be broke the evening before pay
day. That was relatively easy to do because
he could always use another bottle or two of
vodka.
In the early part of the Depression, with
embryonic English, the United States was not
an easy place to get a job. Sergei kept
eating by returning to what he knew - the
care of horses. New York, at that time,
still had many liveries. So he worked in a
stable. When a short-term appointment with
the U S Forest Service Lake States Forest
Experiment Station became available, he
headed west to Saint Paul, Minnesota. From
there the job took him to an experimental
forest in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
and he was back in his beloved northern
forest.
Photo #3 - Sergei in a Model A Ford. Note
USFS Logo on door.
This summer job was followed by similar
short-term appointments and periods of
unemployment until 1934, when he joined the
Soils Department faculty at the University
of Wisconsin and the real "Doc" was born.The
University of Wisconsin
The introduction of the exuberant,
vibrant, cosmopolitan Doc Wilde into the
staid Soils Department ushered both a new
facet into soil science (forest soils) and a
totally new personality and background into
the Department. Doc described the department
when he joined it thus: " When I joined (the
department) it had only six professors and
about ten graduate students. My professional
colleagues were non-drinking, non-swearing
fragments of the Victorian era, dedicated
primarily to the production of crops. A
conversation usually started with alfalfa
and invariably culminated with fertilizers,
the omega of all discussions." The process
of amalgamation must have been an
interesting one. Certainly, when I arrived
on the scene some 16 years later, the
process was still far from complete.
On a personal note, I arrived in Madison
in September of 1950. At that time there
were only three places in the country with a
recognized graduate program in forest soils.
One was at Yale with Harold Lutz. One was at
Duke with Ted Coile, and one was at
Wisconsin with Doc. At that time, Stan
Gessel was an Instructor at the University
of Washington and just starting his program.
Bill Pritchett was just a young agronomist
running corn fertility studies. Poor Bill
had no idea where fate would take him. His
first forest soils publication appeared in
1959 (Pritchett 1959). This paucity of
places to study forest soils led several of
us to the University of Wisconsin, which I
will say was all to our mutual benefit.
Doc's influence on the field at that time
was in full flower and he tended to make the
most of it. With his gaggle of grad
students, Doc would annually make a grand
arrival at the SSSA meetings. In those days,
forest soils was in a sub-section of
Division 5. We were 5A. Division S-7 was not
approved until August 1962.
Professional
interests of the Professor
Professionally, Doc's interests were
about as broad and cosmopolitan as his
interests in the arts and humanities. He
devoted himself to many aspects of forest
soils, in the field, in the nursery, and in
the lab. He was particularly interested in
soil biology and he loved to lecture the
soil genesis and taxonomy people by saying
that they were looking for the parent rock
which is dead and couldn't be the parent of
anything. They really should be looking for
the parent humus. He said this partly
because he believed it and partly just to
bedevil certain people. Throughout his
professional career, one of his chief aims
was to make people think. Some of his
proposals were dismissed as crazy and some
made people angry. However, it frequently
happened that some time later a similar idea
would surface in the literature.
Humus
classification
In the 1950's, Doc was quite disdainful
of the then current schemes of humus
classification. He felt that the parent
organisms(vegetation and/or soil animals or
microbes) should be reflected in the name of
a type of humus and he developed his own
taxonomic scheme for naming humus types. It
certainly was global in its coverage and
almost infinitely expandable, as new humus
types might be elucidated. He also disagreed
with the definition that "humus is all the
organic matter on and in the forest floor,
litter excluded." He argued rather
forcefully that there is really only one
break in a total continuum of events.
Obviously, leaves and other organic debris
that are still on the tree, and live animals
of all sorts, should be excluded, but from
the instant that organic debris (plant or
animal) arrives on the forest floor, it is a
part of the humus and it remains so until
the last atom of carbon returns to the
atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Humus
properties were studied and published
(Galloway 1940, Lafond 1950, Wilde 1958b,
Wilde et al. 1937).
Nursery soils
Even before he joined the University of
Wisconsin, Doc was interested in forest
nursery practice and the production of
quality tree seedlings (Wilde and Kliman
1931). He focused attention on soil
properties, especially as affected by soil
organic matter, and on seedling nutrition.
Photo #4 - Doc with dogs, overseeing
installation of organic matter study in
nursery
Whereas many of the agronomic soils in
Wisconsin were medium to fine textured and
were maintained near neutrality, forest
soils, including those in nurseries, were
generally on coarse textured, mostly glacial
outwash, materials. These soils were acidic,
infertile, and had low organic matter
content. This meant that they were poorly
buffered and had low cation exchange
capacities. While soluble fertilizers were
helpful in stimulating seedling growth,
their effectiveness was short-lived. In
order to counter this soil leakage, Doc
devised what was called "liquid humates"
(Wilde 1937). In order to produce these
liquid humates, Doc devised very specific
"cook book" of directions.
Photo #5 - Doc with equipment to produce
"liquid humates
Basically, you put a good humus in a 55
gallon drum, to about the half-way mark.
Then you added very specific fertilizer
materials at specified rates, and stirred
with a wooden paddle while adding water to
nearly fill the drum. After thorough mixing
and settling has occurred, the supernate is
decanted into sprinkling cans and used to
fertilize troubled seedlings. The results
were quite striking. Reusing the humus in
the drum was discouraged, but was
recommended as an ingredient in the
preparation of composts. Further studies and
quantifications were carried out by one of
his grad students (Krumm 1941).
The mineral nutrition of seedlings, based
on both genetics and soil testing was a
strong interest. It was studied, and soil
fertility standards were published for both
northern conifers (Wilde 1938 ) and northern
hardwoods (Wilde and Patzer 1940). These
standards were used in many temperate
locations for a long time. The production of
merely large seedlings is usually not the
best objective. The carry-over effect of
nursery soil fertility on the survival and
early growth of seedlings was also studied
(Wilde et al. 1940). Interestingly, one of
Doc's students published in volume 2 of the
Soil Science Society of America Proceedings
on the importance of ferrous iron on both
plants and soils (Kliman 1937).
Soil organic matter amendments were a
subject of considerable interest. Many tests
of various types of peat and humus were run
at both the Trout Lake and Wisconsin Rapids
nurseries. The peats improved the soil's
physical properties and increased the CEC,
but did little for soil fertility. Humus,
while salutary was not a practical soil
amendment. Consequently, work was undertaken
to develop composts using sawdust as the
organic material that could provide all of
the desired benefits in soil physical,
chemical, and biological properties. In
order to hasten the decomposition of the
sawdust and also improve the soil fertility
when the sawdust compost was applied to the
soil, various treatments of the sawdust were
studied. Eventually, a sequence of
treatments including injecting anhydrous
ammonia which added N and did significant
alkaline hydrolysis of the sawdust,
reacidification with phosphoric acid,
supplementation with other nutrients, and
inoculation with a rapid
cellulose-decomposing fungus (Coprinus
ephemerus) produced a satisfactory product
(Davey 1953a, 1953b, 1955, Davey and Wilde
1955). This process was sufficiently
specific that the Wisconsin Alumni Research
Foundation (WARF) applied for and was issued
a U. S. Patent. Despite the use of strong
chemicals, the Organic Farmers publicized
the sawdust composts. More than 1,000
requests for a reprint of the 1953a paper
were received.
The effect of various volatile
substances, including sawdust compost, on
excised roots was studied (Persidsky and
Wilde 1954). The compost proved highly
stimulatory. Probably, today, we would be
identifying the volatiles such as ethylene.
Then, they were just "volatiles."
Mycorrhizae
The current topic of much interest and
research, mycorrhizae were once either
unknown, ignored, or relegated to that
subject "that only foresters care about, and
you know, they are a bit crazy anyhow." Doc
was a voice singing in the wilderness
concerning mycorrhizae already in the
1940's. His student Russell Rosendahl
studied the effect of mycorrhizae on
seedling's ability to take up potassium and
phosphorus from difficultly available
minerals (Rosendahl 1942). His Ph.D. thesis,
written in 1943 was entitled "Mycorrhizae of
forest trees, their nutritional, ecological
and silvicultural importance." Now days,
when the North American Conference on
Mycorrhizae is held, registration usually
has to be limited. This is a wonderful
change since the First North American
Conference on Mycorrhizae. It was organized
by Ed Hacskaylo (Hacskaylo 1971) at
Beltsville, who worked on ectomycorrhizal
trees and Jim Gerdemann at the University of
Illinois, who worked on endomycorrhizal
soybeans. If you think the foresters were
lonely, just imagine how it was for Jim. He
was right up there with the Maytag
repairman. The conference was held at
Urbana, IL in April of 1969. The organizers
had invited more than North American workers
to participate in order to have a reasonable
program. There were 26 papers presented with
a total of 29 authors. Out of the 29, one
was Doc Wilde, himself, 5 were first
generation Wilde students, and one was
already a second generation student.
Photo #6: Group at First North American
Conference on Mycorrhizae. Pictured, from
left - Edward Hacskaylo, Earl Stone, Charles
Davey, Jaya Iyer, S. A. Wilde, and Garth
Voigt.
Forest soil
mapping and evaluation
From Doc's earliest days, soil mapping
and evaluation for forest growth and
silvicultural implications were major
interests (Wilde 1928, 1929a, 1929b, 1932a,
1932b, 1933, 1940a, 1940b, Wilde et al.
1951, 1954).
Photo #7 - Doc, on a forest soil mapping
trip; investigsating soil properties beneath
an upturned pine.
Soil water relations and hydrology were
also studied in terms of the influence of
forest growth on the ground water level
(Wilde et al. 1953) and the influence of
beaver dam construction and removal on the
ground water level, soil fertility, and tree
growth (Wilde et al. 1959).
Simplified methods for soil and plant
analysis
Despite some of his impracticalities, Doc
was basically a very practical person. One
of his favorite activities was to take some
complicated laboratory method and simplify
it and either make it suitable for field
work or at least to simplify it for lab use.
Some of these innovations and adaptations
included measuring soil texture (Wilde 1935)
and soil organic matter content (Wilde
1942). In 1950, he reported on the
development of a novel test. He used a blood
pressure sphygmomanometer to test the soil's
resistance to air movement (Wilde 1950,
Wilde and Steinbrenner 1950). Gene
Steinbrenner later refined and improved on
the original idea and used it extensively in
his land evaluation work with forest
industry in the Pacific Northewest. Along
with Garth Voigt, Doc developed two seedling
evaluation tests. One was a test of the
specific gravity of seedling stems and
related this value to the fertility of the
soil in which the seedlings had been raised
(Wilde and Voigt 1948). Another evaluation
of seedling quality was to relate the
seedling's ability to absorb water with its
tendency to loose water to transpiration.
This test was called the
Absorption-Transpiration Quotient (Wilde and
Voigt 1949). The content of ash, protein,
and organosolubles of pine seedlings was
also evaluated in relation to nursery soil
fertility (Wilde et al. 1948). All of these
tests were intended to help the nursery
manager have a way to evaluate the
probability that the seedlings being
produced would be likely to survive in the
field. Eventually, a small book was
published for foresters and horticulturists
for soil and plant analysis. The book
included a collection of practical methods,
several by Doc Wilde and his graduate
students and several from the literature.
The manual went through four editions, the
last appearing in 1972 (Wilde et al. 1972).
Many forestry students first heard of S.
A. Wilde as the author of a text book. He
published two rather distinct editions. The
first was published by Chronica Botanica
(Wilde 1946) and the second by Ronald Press
(Wilde 1958b). The 1958 version remained as
the principal text in forest soils for a
number of years. In Wisconsin, the
Conservation Department published a
monograph on the "Soils of Wisconsin in
relation to silviculture" (Wilde et al.
1949).
Students
Doc influenced many students, both in his
forest soils course (about 1,000) and most
significantly his string of graduate
students. As noted above, he joined the
faculty at the University of Wisconsin in
1934 and continued there until his
retirement in 1968. The following list
includes his students and indicates the
degree earned by each; M = masters degree
and D = doctorate.
1936 - Stephen Kliman (M)
1938 - John Cady (M), Harry Galloway (M),
Stephen Kliman (D)
1940 - Earl Stone (M), Don White (M)
1941 - C. J. Krumm (M)
1943 - Russell Rosendahl (D)
1949 - Garth Voigt (M)
1951 - Andre Lafond (D), Eugene
Steinbrenner (M),
Garth Voigt (D), Donald White (D),
Chester Youngberg (D)
1952 - Charles Davey (M), Robert Pierce
(M), Thomas Schultz (M)
1954 - Donald Mader (M)
1955 - Charles Davey (D),
1956 - Don Mader (D), Eugene Wehrli (M)
1957 - Dale Cole (M), Theodore Keller
(D), Albert Leaf (D),
Robert Pierce (D), Gordon Wallis (M)
1959 - Demetrios Spyridakis (M)
1960 - Franklin Haberland (M), Helmut
Krause (D)
1961 - Hirofumi Tanaka (M)
1962 - Maarten de Vries (D), Jaya Iyer
(M)
1965 - Andrea Giordono (M), Demetrios
Spyridakas (D)
1966 - Robert Maeglin (M), Byron Shaw
(M),
Christian Tanzer (M), William Trautmann
(M),
Kenneth Watterston (D)
1968 - Alvin Fedkenheuer (M), Jaya Iyer
(D), Erkki Lipas (M)
1969 - Byron Shaw (D)
Personal
Interests
Doc was a voracious reader. Garth Voigt
said one time that he thought Doc could have
easily written a weekly book review for the
local news paper. He also read the
scientific literature extensively. When a
student undertook a new subject, it usually
happened that Doc very soon knew the
literature in that subject better than the
student.
Doc loved art (painting and sketching).
He drew nearly all of the soil and
vegetation sketches that appeared in his
publications. Music was a passion and he
frequently organized duets to quartets to
play in his office over the noon hour. We
students were subjected to chamber music
regularly. I must say it was mostly quite
good. The two most frequent participants
were Doc on the viola and Francis Hole on
the violin.
Doc owned a beautiful ivory chess set and
inlaid wood chess board. He carried that
with him frequently across campus and was
regarded as one of the best players at the
University. At one time, Steve Spurr, who
was then at Michigan, came to the University
of Wisconsin as Doc's guest for several
days. I was assigned as Steve's Aide de
Camp. The man was a mental giant. He had
already written the texts on forest ecology
and remote sensing and as I took him from
one faculty member's office to the next, I
was floored by the fact that Steve was on
the cutting edge in every discipline.
However, when it came time to play chess
with Doc, they were both in their element.
They eschewed the use of a board or chess
pieces and played mental chess. They each
remembered where every piece was on the
board at all times. Steve won but Doc was
absolutely in heaven. After Steve returned
to Michigan, Doc was as fatigued as if he
had been in a marathon.
At one time, someone had been to Russia
and they brought a bottle of real Muscovite
vodka to Doc as a gift. Some time later, I
happened to be at his house and at that
point, the Muscovite bottle was about half
full. I was shocked to see Doc refill the
bottle with domestic vodka. After asking
about this, I learned that it had already
been done a few times. His explanation was
that he was a firm believer in the theory of
infinite dilution. Thus, no matter how many
times he added domestic vodka to the bottle,
he was sure that every drink contained at
least a few molecules of the original.
Having been a refugee himself, Doc did
much to help displaced people after World
War II. He did this with little fanfare.
Briefly, there was Dmitri Pronin who was
Polish but had been caught between the
German and Russian lines for days. There was
Professor Persidsky from Russia and Matsui
from Japan. Matsui was one of the few
Japanese who loved the atom bomb. He had
been a fully trained Kamikaze pilot but two
days before he was to make the ultimate
sacrifice for the Emperor, the atom bomb
brought the war to a quick and decisive end
and undoubtedly saved his life.
Vingettes
Doc always claimed that he did his best
work at night. One of the evidences of this
was that he kept a note pad on his night
table. In the middle of the night, he would
awaken with a great idea. The light would be
turned on and the idea sketched out on the
pad. Then he could return to sleep. In the
morning, he would arrive at the department
and gather us around and expound on why we
needed to drop everything and start
immediately on this new departure. This idea
might remain high priority for a week, but
then began to recede. Within three weeks
there was the expected comment that "It has
all been known for a long time and is mostly
baloney anyway." Poor Theo Keller from
Switzerland changed his thesis subject three
times until the rest of us explained to him
what was happening. On two occasions, once
with Garth Voigt and once with me, Doc came
to his office in the morning in a foul mood.
In both cases, he was hoping that Garth or I
could make sense of what he had written the
previous night. It was impossible to even
tell whether it was in English or Russian,
let alone be able to read it. Those subjects
probably still remain to be researched.
Regardless of the humor in things like that,
it was obvious that the man's mind never
rested.
Photo #8 - Doc, in his back yard in
Madison, Wisconsin. His title for this
picture was "Contemplating the obvious."
Despite the fact that his native tongue
was not English, Doc had a marvelous command
of the language. This is revealed, if you
read parts of his text books. However, the
really impressive writing to me was his
ability to write humor. I want to quote just
one small piece from a talk he gave at an
SAF Section meeting concerning scientific
writing.
"The skeptical approach (to scientific
writing) usually reflects the contemplative
mood of the author, resulting in part from
the arithmetical brevity of his monthly
check. It is particularly appropriate to the
authors of graduate student standing and may
be exemplified by the 'Ode to Forest Soils,'
a poetic creation of Wisconsin members of
the lower academic fauna:
With a face most hair and glassy stare
Like a dog whose day is done
I juggle some pink stuff in a flask,
as the drops fall one by one.
Ours not to question why--
Ours but to weigh and dry,
What does it matter that someone has a
buffer
We are the ones who must titrate and suffer.
Aye, bury me deep in the mouldy earth
And sprinkle me well with lime,
Where I can rest in deep sweet peace
Until the endpoint of time.
No more shall I cringe to the crash of glass
Nor gag at the brimstone's smell
I've a cleaner, sweeter haven
In the very depths of the gley horizon."
Continuing Influence
Many of you here today are the academic
grandchildren of S. A. Wilde. I believe we
are now well into the fourth generation.
Doc's influence will continue to spread and
diminish in obviousness. Like the pebble
tossed into the quiet pond, the waves go out
and out, get smaller and smaller, but are
still there.
I would like to close this tribute to the
man with a few more of his own words. These
were mostly spoken to grad students. Perhaps
we should call this "The Gospel according to
Doc."
"Do the hardest work of your whole day
before breakfast-- get up."
"You read just enough to keep yourself
misinformed."
"Remember, every thing has a limit,
except ignorance."
"If you insist on smoking while doing
ether extractions, tell me how to dispose of
your ashes." (I suspect this one was aimed
at a specific imprudent student.)
"Polish your thesis so it will begin to
reflect the ideas."
"Never use big words; big words name
little things. All big things have little
names, such as life and death, peace and
war, or dawn, day, night, hope, love, home.
Learn to use little words in a big way; it
is hard to do, but they say what you mean.
When you don't know what you mean, use big
words; they often fool little people."
In his office, for his own edification, as
well as those of us who entered there, he
had a sign which read:
"Easy reading; damned hard writing.
Easy writing; damned hard reading."
I am not certain that was original with Doc,
but he believed in it and pressed the idea
upon those of us who worked in the
scientific vineyard with him and for him.
I consider myself very lucky to have been
a first generation student of this giant in
our field. |
