The 1993 W. O. Atwater Centennial Memorial Lecture. The life and times of W. O. Atwater (1844-1907).

Wilbur Atwater, the son of a Methodist minister, grew up in New England and was an undergraduate during the Civil War. He obtained his Ph.D. in agricultural chemistry at Yale in 1869, and spent the next two years in post-graduate study in Germany. In 1874 he was appointed to the Faculty of Wesleyan University, and was their first Professor of Chemistry. For two years (1875-77) he directed the first agricultural experiment station in the U.S. at Wesleyan. When it was transferred to Yale he gradually changed his interest to human nutrition, and how the poor could make more economical food choices, though he believed that they needed to maintain high-protein intakes if they were to remain productive. In 1887, with the passage of the Hatch Act, a second experiment station was established in Connecticut with Atwater as director. He also served for nearly 3 years as the first director of the Office of Experiment Stations in Washington, DC. His next ambition was to have the first human calorimeter in the U.S. This was operating at Wesleyan by 1893, and his team was able to compare the net energy values of carbohydrates, fats and alcohol in sparing body tissues. He compiled data from many sources for the composition and digestibility of foods, and also organized the setting up of cooperative programs of nutritional studies, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in many States. His active life ended with a stroke in 1904.