Russell Wilder

Russell Morse Wilder Sr. (November 24, 1885 – December 16, 1959)

was an American physician, diabetologist, epileptologist, and medical researcher, known as one of the originators of the ketogenic ("classic keto") diet as a therapy for both epilepsy and diabetes. He coined the term "ketogenic diet." (Rush Medical College was affiliated with the University of Chicago until 1942.) During his undergraduate study he spent a year at Heidelberg University. As a medical student, he went to Mexico City in December 1909 with the physician and medical researcher Howard Taylor Ricketts to study typhus fever in the Valley of Mexico. Ricketts died of the disease on May 5, 1910, but Wilder returned to Mexico to carry on the research. He studied for eight months in 1914 in Vienna, principally at the First Medical Clinic under the pathologist Albert Müller-Deham (1881–1971), who had studied as a medical assistant under Carl von Noorden. Upon his return from Vienna, Wilder became a physician at Chicago's Presbyterian Hospital, In 1954 he received the American Medical Association's Joseph Goldberger Award in Clinical Nutrition. In 1956 he was the president of the National Vitamin Foundation, which in 1954 created the Russell M. Wilder Fellowship. In 1956 he received an award from the American Bakers Association "in recognition of his leadership in promoting enrichment of white flour and bread with vitamins."