Edwin Bidwell Wilson correspondence

Edwin Bidwell Wilson (1879-1964), A.B., 1899, Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts; Ph.D., 1901, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; Honorary L.L.D., 1955, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, taught mathematics at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, and was the Harvard School of Public Health's first professor and head of the Department of Vital Statistics when the school was organized in Boston, 1922. After retiring from Harvard in 1945, he joined the United States Navy’s Office of Naval Research. Among others, Wilson contributed to the theory and application of mathematical epidemiology and the analysis of dosage-response curves.

Wilson was born on 25 April 1879 in Hartford, Connecticut to Edwin Horace and Jane Amelia Wilson. His father was a teacher and superintendent of schools in Middletown, Connecticut. Wilson had four siblings, two brothers and two sisters. Wilson received an A.B. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1899, a Ph.D from Yale University in 1901, and an Honorary L.L.D. from Wesleyan University in 1955. In 1900, Wilson was appointed an Instructor at Yale. After receiving his doctorate in 1901, he took a year’s leave of absence and went to Paris to study at the École Polytechnique, the Sorbonne, and the Collège de France in 1902 and 1903. In 1906, Wilson was appointed an assistant professor at Yale, leaving in 1907 to teach at MIT as an Associate Professor of Mathematics. He remained at MIT until 1922, becoming a full professor in 1911, and chairing the Department of Physics in 1917. From 1920 to 1922, when the position of MIT’s College President was vacant after the death of President MacLaurin, Wilson served as the secretary of the administrative committee that ran MIT during the search for a new president. In 1922, when the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) was organized, he left MIT to be the first professor and head of the Department of Vital Statistics. During this time he was also a professor in the Department of Economics for Harvard University. In 1945, when he retired from his positions at Harvard, he became the Lecturer on Citizenship at the University of Glasgow, Scotland where he lectured until 1946. From 1948 until his death in 1964, he worked for the Office of Naval Research in the United States.

Throughout his career, Wilson worked on a variety of subjects including vector analysis, advanced calculus, aerodynamics, statistics, and economics. In 1901, he published his first book, a collection of Professor Josiah Willard Gibbs's lectures on vector calculus called Vector Analysis (1901). While teaching mathematics at MIT, Wilson developed his own textbook and published Advanced Calculus (1912) based on his experience teaching the subject both at Yale and MIT. Between 1902 and 1916, Wilson’s research interests focused on the field of mathematics, including vector analysis, calculus, and advanced geometry, and broadened to include aerodynamics and aeronautics. In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson appointed the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the first Annual Report of the Committee, printed in 1916, included a report by Wilson titled, “Theory of an Aeroplane Encountering Gusts” (1916). Wilson offered courses to graduate students at MIT in aeronautics and published his own text, Aeronautics (1920), using as a foundation his lectures on rigid and fluid dynamics as applied to flight. When Wilson moved from MIT to the new Harvard School of Public Health, he turned his attention to mathematical statistics and their use in medical questions, including epidemiological, dosage, and public health studies.

Wilson was elected to membership in the National Academy of Science in 1919 and he was the first managing editor of the Academy’s Proceedings from 1915 until 1964. He was a member of the Academy’s Committee on Government Relations and Science (1929-1938), serving as Chairman of the Physics Section (1930-1933), Vice-President (1949-1953), member of the Council (1953-1956), and member of several annual nominating committees for Academy officers. He was also a member of the American Philosophical Society, and received the John F. Lewis Prize from them in 1963 for The Last Unpublished Notes of J. Willard Gibbs. He was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, a member of the Mathematical Society of Benares, and of the Social Science Research Council. He was a member and later president of the American Society for the Control of Cancer and was a director of the American Cancer Society when the group changed its name. For his work with the Office of Naval Research, he received the Superior Civilian Service Award (1960) and the Distinguished Civilian Service Award (1964).

In 1911, Wilson married Ethel Sentner of Edmonton, Canada. The couple had two daughters: Doris and Enid Wilson. Wilson died in Boston on 28 December 1964.