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.

A popular professor during his time at North Carolina State University, Chilton received the Graduate Students' Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Botany Graduate Program in 1987. He and his wife, biologist and NCSU adjunct professor Dr. Mary-Dell Chilton, supported numerous students both financially and academically. This included housing some students in their home, which they referred to as "the Chilton Hilton." Scott Chilton retired from NC State in December 2003, but continued to teach and work in his phytochemistry laboratory.

On the occasion of his retirement, Chilton and his wife established the Chilton Undergraduate Research Endowment in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The endowment funds the Chilton Undergraduate Research Award, and provides financial support for outstanding students to conduct research in botanical science. He also established the Scott and Mary-Dell Chilton Library Endowment which supports the NCSU Libraries’ collections in all subjects and formats.

Chilton married his wife Mary-Dell, in Seattle, Washington, in 1966. The Chiltons had two sons, Mark and Andrew, both of whom became lawyers. In 1991 Mark was elected to the Chapel Hill (N.C.) Town Council, making him the youngest person ever to have been elected to office in North Carolina. He was subsequently elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 2003 and became the mayor of Carrboro, North Carolina, in 2005.

Scott Chilton died suddenly while hiking Washington’s Mount Adams on August 5, 2004.

From the guide to the Scott Chilton Papers, 1917 - 2004, (Special Collections Research Center)