Professor Theodore Wilson Retires

Ted Wilson was born in Elgin, Illinois in 1935. His father was a civil engineer and his mother was a housewife. He attended the public schools of Elgin, and he enjoyed the benefits of a quiet childhood.

He received a scholarship to attend Cornell University, and both his undergraduate education in engineering physics and his graduate education in aeronautical engineering were taken at Cornell. The education he received at Cornell provided the capital to support 38 years of professional life.

He has been a conscientious teacher. He taught courses in all three subfields in the Department, solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, and dynamics; both laboratory and lecture courses; and courses at all levels, from sophomore mechanics to courses at the graduate level. He advised 15 students to the Ph. D., and all of these went on to successful careers at universities in the US and abroad, in industry, or in medicine.

Ted served the Department as director of graduate studies and as associate head, the college as member and chair of the Dean’s Advisory Committee on Promotion and Tenure, and the national scientific community as a member of the Respiratory and Applied Physiology Study Section of NIH.

At the beginning of his career, his research included studies in fluid mechanics and acoustics. He was also one of the earlier workers in biomedical engineering, and for most of his career, his research focused on respiratory physiology. He collaborated closely with several outstanding physiologists, most at Mayo Clinic, in developing mathematical models for the mechanics of respiration. This work contributed to understanding the relation between micro- and macro-mechanics of the lung, stress in the lung, flow, ventilation distribution, and the action of the respiratory muscles. His tenure at Minnesota was leavened by time spent in Oslo, Berne, Boston, Houston, Brussels, Naples, and Rochester. He was an author of more than 100 research papers, his work received continuous external support from his 2nd to his 38th year at Minnesota, and he became an authority in his primary field, respiratory mechanics.

He was married twice and has four children from those marriages. His children have been and continue to be a joy.

He feels that he was fortunate to find work that suited his temperament and to live at a time and in a place that provided the opportunity to do what he enjoyed.

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