Wilson, Eva D.

Eva D. Wilson was born on August 8, 1905 in Ogden, Iowa. She attended the Iowa State College, graduating in 1927; completed her master's work, as well as a dietetic internship, at the State University of Iowa in 1928; and earned a doctorate in nutrition at the University of Chicago in 1934. She was on the faculty of the University of Minnesota and Ohio State University, where she was head of the Department of Foods and Nutrition. She came to Penn State with her husband, H.K. Wilson, in 1948, and became a part-time professor of home economics. The following year, she became a full-time professor and was appointed head of the Department of Foods and Nutrition. She was renowned for her research in food composition, metabolism (specifically in relation to minerals and nitrogen), and nutrition. In 1960 she left Penn State to become the associate chairperson of home economics at the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station of Ohio State University.

Eva Donelson was born in 1905 on a farm near Odgen in People's Township, Boone County, Iowa. After graduating from Iowa State College (now Iowa State University), she pursued research in nutrition at both the University of Iowa dietetics department and the Merrill Palmer School in Detroit, where she studied the vitamin G content of human milk.

In 1934 she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and taught nutrition courses at the University of Minnesota until 1946 when she became head of Food and Nutrition at Ohio State University. When Donelson married H.K. Wilson in 1947 she moved to State College, Pennsylvania, where Wilson was Dean of Men at Pennsylvania State University. Eva Donelson Wilson became Head of the Food and Nutrition Department and published Principles of nutrition in 1959.

After the death of her husband, Wilson returned to Ohio State University and, in 1965, joined the USAID program in Brazil to help initiate a program in home economics at the Escola Superior de Agricultura Luis de Queiroz (ESALGQ). She retired from this program in 1972.