Early life 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
United States Coast Survey.
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.
Professional career 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. Hilgard was appointed as custodian of the University of Mississippi's buildings for the duration of the Civil 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. == Commemoration and honors ==