Dates

• Existence: 1905 - 2007

Biography

Eva Donelson was born August 8, 1905 on a farm near Ogden in Peoples Township, Boone County, Iowa.  She graduated from Ogden High School in 1922 and entered Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) in 1923, graduating in 1927. Donelson worked in 1927-28 at the Merrill Palmer School in Detroit, a school involved in the study of early childhood.  After a brief stint in the University of Iowa dietetics department Donelson returned to the Merrill Palmer School in 1930-32.  There she did her dissertation research, studying the vitamin G content of human milk.  In 1932 she entered the University of Chicago, acquiring her Ph.D. in 1934.  She taught nutrition courses at the University of Minnesota until 1946 when she became head of Food and Nutrition at Ohio State University. 

Donelson married H.K. Wilson December 22, 1947 and joined him at State College, Pennsylvania, where Wilson was Dean of Men at Pennsylvania State University and Eva Donelson Wilson became Head of the Food and Nutrition Department.  H.K. Wilson died in 1958.  In 1959 Eva Donelson Wilson published Principles of Nutrition.

Wilson returned to Ohio State, where she carried on research funded by the United States Department of Agriculture.  In 1965 Wilson joined the USAID program in Brazil to help initiate a program in Home Economics at the Escola Superior de Agricultura Luis de Queiroz (ESALQ).  This is the Agriculture College of the University of Sao Paulo, located in Piracicaba.  She retired from this program in 1972.

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