Chilton, William Scott, 1933-2004

William Scott Chilton was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1933 and raised in the same city by his parents, a chemical engineer and an educator. He attended Duke University for his undergraduate education in chemistry, graduating summa cum laude in 1955. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Tübingen in Germany from 1955 to 1956 and served in the United States Navy from 1956 to 1959. He did graduate work at the University Illinois-Urbana, studying the structures of Neomycin antibiotics and receiving his Ph.D. in 1963. After his graduation Chilton began a professorship at the University of Washington-Seattle. He achieved the rank of full professor before moving to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1980. In 1983 Chilton moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and began his career in North Carolina State University's Botany Department .

A natural products chemist, Chilton distinguished himself in research focused upon phytochemistry, fungi, and plant-associate microbes, the structure of novel amino acids, and ethnobotanical uses of plants. He was well known for his research on a number of topics, including mushroom toxins, crown-gall metabolites, and the corn toxin DIMBOA. Chilton was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, American Society of Plant Physiologists, American Society of Pharmacognosy, American Chemical Society and North American Mycological Society.

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