PSYCHE 
VOL. XLIV 
SEPTEMBER, 1937 
No. 3 
PROFESSOR WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER 
With a List of His Published Writings 
Professor Wheeler was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 
March 19, 1865 and died suddenly in Cambridge, Massa- 
chusetts on April 19, 1937 shortly after passing his seventy- 
second birthday. He had retired from active teaching in 
1934, but was still energetically engaged in the continuance 
of his biological investigations which had extended, without 
interruption, over a full half century. 
Young Wheeler was educated in Milwaukee, for a time in 
the public schools and afterwards in the Englemann German 
Academy. He was later graduated in 1884 from the German- 
American College, a remarkably efficient school, with 
ideals based on those of the fine group of early German 
immigrants whose culture dominated Milwaukee during the 
latter part of the last century. He always attributed much 
to the training received at the Academy ; perhaps too much, 
for he was certainly their star pupil of all time. There he 
received a broad education, and developed his first interest 
in the classics, which he read extensively, never forgot and 
referred to frequently in his later writings. At this point 
his formal education ended for a period of six years. 
Wheeler had always been much interested in Natural 
History, and was greatly delighted when in 1884 Professor 
H. A. Ward of Rochester brought to Milwaukee a collection 
of stuffed animals, skeletons, and other natural history 
specimens, with the idea of selling them in that city as the 
nucleus for a public museum. Ward was so pleased with 
Wheeler that he offered him a position in the Ward’s Natural 
Science Establishment at Rochester. This was accepted 
