Pedologist

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Hans Jenny called E. W. Hilgard a geologist-turned-pedologist (Jenny. 1961). But Hilgard himself never used the terms like pedology, nor pedologist. For Hilgard geology was the most authoritative discipline, although he was a chemist by training. His first publication, ‘Report of the Geology and Agriculture of the State of Mississippi’ (Hilgard, 1860), set an exemplary model of field soil observations and soil descriptions, clearly noting a soil body and its profile as a vertical cross-section and discerning naturally differentiated horizons. Because of these early outstanding works in soil researches, some of his contemporaries, including Vasilii Dokuchaev (Dokuchaev, 1899), and younger generations, including Hans Jenny (Jenny, 1961) esteemed Hilgard, regarding him as one of the forerunners of pedology with recognition of soil as a ‘natural body’. But in 1891 Hilgard commented at an international geological congress on a paper reporting on the formation of chernozems in the Russian steppes (Krasnov, 1892), and thereby openly called soils as ‘the latest of geological formations’. Hilgard might have been born a little too early to recognize a soil as a natural body divergent from its geological parent rocks.

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