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WM asked Wabash
archivists Johanna Herring and Beth Swift to identify
some of the College’s best-known scientists
of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Andrew Jackson Moyer ’22
Named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Moyer
was a microbiologist and mycologist whose discoveries
provided the foundation for the industrial production
of penicillin, saving thousands of lives during
World War II, arriving just in time for the D-Day
invasion.
David Cushman ’61
Cushman was co-winner of the prestigious Albert
Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award, one of the
most coveted awards in medical science. Cushman
and co-winner Michael Ondetti discovered captopril,
the first drug designed to cure hypertension and
now used by millions to treat hypertension and congestive
heart failure.
John Merle Coulter (professor of botany, 1879-1891)
In 1872, Coulter joined the Hayden Expedition to
Yellowstone as assistant geologist and became one
of America’s leading botanists (see “The
Last Adventurer-Naturalist”, page kk). He
left Wabash to become President of Indiana University
and ended his career as head of the Department of
Botany at University of Chicago.
Joseph Nelson Rose, 1885
Internationally known botanist and meticulous researcher
who made botanical explorations to throughout the
Western U.S. and Latin America, Rose’s work
set the standard in cacti botany. He became the
first, full-time, professional botanist associated
with the Smithsonian Institution and his book, The
Cactacaea, helped make popular the little cactus
plants now available for home decoration. As a tribute,
three botanists named plants after him.
(visit http://www.nybg.org/bsci/herb/cactaceae1.html#Rose)
Mason Blanchard Thomas (professor of botany,
1891-1912)
Cornell University can thank Wabash for establishing
its botany department! Thomas, a Cornell graduate,
was widely known for his contributions in several
fields of botany, but his deeper gift was his ability
to inspire students. A succession of first-rate
students went from Thomas’s classrooms at
Wabash to Cornell for graduate study, and ten of
those students eventually became the core of the
faculty during the early years of the budding department.
Horace Hovey, 1853
A Presbyterian minister and the “father of
American cave exploration,” Hovey was the
first person to map Wyandotte Cave and was sent
by Scribner’s, Scientific American, and Encyclopedia
Brittanica to write about the newly discovered natural
wonders of Mammoth Cave and Luray Caverns. His most
famous book, Celebrated American Caverns is a “classic
in Americana as well as in speleology,” and
was an “unmatched popularizer of American
caves.”
Edgar William Olive, 1893
The oldest living Wabash alumnus at the time of
his death in 1971, Olive exemplified the liberal
arts scholar, with a Ph.D. from Harvard and careers
in science, teaching, accounting, real estate and
citrus farming! Regarded as a pioneer scientist
in research on the morphology of fungi, he became
curator of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in New
York.
John Lyle Campbell, 1848
The Wabash professor with the longest span of continuous
teaching in the history of the College, Campbell
taught mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, and physics.
He was the originator and secretary of the United
States Centennial Commission from 1872 to 1876.
The Centennial Exhibition he envisioned took place
in Philadelphia in 1876—“a coming-out
party for the United States of America; for the
first time, the country’s industrial progress
was put on display for the world to see.”
Edmund O. Hovey, professor and College co-founder
An ordained minister and co-founder of Wabash College,
Hovey taught the first science classes at Wabash.
It is mainly due to his persistence that the College
developed its science departments to their present
state of excellence. He used his own specimens to
form the nucleus for the Hovey Museum of Natural
Sciences, which he curated.
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