Remembering Dr. Hobson Wildenthal

“Dr. Hobson Wildenthal’s name is synonymous with that of UT Dallas,” said UT Dallas President Richard C. Benson, the Eugene McDermott Distinguished University Chair of Leadership. “His work, in great part, built the University into what it is today. He was a tireless advocate who was determined in his efforts to elevate the institution’s reputation and recruit top faculty, staff and students. His leadership helped build a well-rounded university with academic rigor at its core.”

As a champion of academic excellence, Wildenthal was instrumental in the early 1990s in formulating a core curriculum that addressed key components of undergraduate education. His principal order of business in the early days was to focus on student recruitment. Just a few years earlier, the Texas Legislature had approved the admittance of freshmen and sophomores to the University but required the academic selection process to be as rigorous as its sister institution in Austin. Wildenthal’s idea was to provide full scholarships for National Merit Scholarship Program finalists in order to attract exceptional young students. Today, UT Dallas is among the top 10 universities in the country with the greatest number of National Merit Scholars, with nearly 200 each year.

“Dr. Hobson Wildenthal’s name is synonymous with that of UT Dallas. His work, in great part, built the University into what it is today. He was a tireless advocate who was determined in his efforts to elevate the institution’s reputation and recruit top faculty, staff and students. His leadership helped build a well-rounded university with academic rigor at its core.”

UT Dallas President Richard C. Benson, the Eugene McDermott
Distinguished University Chair of Leadership

In 2000, inspired by the success of Wildenthal’s recruitment efforts, Margaret McDermott, wife of Texas Instruments Inc. co-founder Eugene McDermott, made a historic $32 million gift to UT Dallas to establish and endow the Eugene McDermott Scholars Program, which was designed to attract 20 of the nation’s brightest freshmen to the campus each year. Since then, nearly 400 students from across the country and around the world have been the beneficiaries of a program that is one of the most selective and generous undergraduate merit awards in the nation and includes full tuition, stipend and travel abroad opportunities.

“I’ve seen firsthand his efforts to not only build upon the University’s success, but also to innovate. He has led efforts to create new academic programs and new departments and schools, and to build critical partnerships with state and national leaders in academia, industry and the private sector. He poured his intellect and soul into UT Dallas throughout the years, and we are all beneficiaries of his service to this institution.”

Dr. Inga Musselman, provost, vice president for academic affairs
and the Cecil H. Green Distinguished Chair of Academic Leadership

“I consider Dr. Wildenthal to be a colleague, one of my professional mentors, a true friend and an ally for UT Dallas, its faculty and students,” Musselman said. “I’ve seen firsthand his efforts to not only build upon the University’s success, but also to innovate. He has led efforts to create new academic programs and new departments and schools, and to build critical partnerships with state and national leaders in academia, industry and the private sector. He poured his intellect and soul into UT Dallas throughout the years, and we are all beneficiaries of his service to this institution.”

Raised in San Marcos, Texas, and later in the West Texas towns of San Angelo and Alpine, Bryan Hobson Wildenthal graduated in 1958 with a bachelor’s degree in English and mathematics from Sul Ross State University, where his father served as president from 1952 to 1965, and his mother fostered a love for art and music.

After graduating from the University of Kansas with a PhD in physics, he held appointments at Rice University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Texas A&M University, and, for 13 years, at Michigan State University. He devoted most of the 20 years of his pre-administrative academic career to experimental and theoretical studies of the structure of atomic nuclei, work recounted in over 200 influential research papers. He focused specifically on what became known as the “Wildenthal shell-model Hamiltonian.” This theoretical work accurately predicted physical phenomena later verified in experimental studies.

Over the years, he has been honored for his work. He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1973 and selected for the Dallas Historical Society’s Award for Excellence in Education. He was awarded a senior U.S. fellowship from Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He held visiting scientist appointments at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Munich, the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, the University of Paris in Orsay, the University of Oxford, the University of Manchester and the University of São Paulo.

Wildenthal moved into administrative roles in 1983, first as department head of physics and atmospheric science at Drexel University and then, in 1987, as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of New Mexico.

He came to UT Dallas as vice president for academic affairs in 1992, was named provost in 1994 and added the title of executive vice president in 1999. He was appointed interim president in 2015 and returned to the post of executive vice president in 2016.

Over those years, more than a dozen new state-of-the-art buildings opened; a $50 million Campus Landscape Enhancement Project commenced that has transformed the campus, thanks to a gift from Margaret McDermott; and the University expanded its focus beyond science, technology, engineering and mathematics to encompass the arts with the opening of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, funded by a $17 million gift from O’Donnell and championed by Wildenthal.

In 2017, a gift in honor of Wildenthal from the Eugene McDermott Foundation created another endowment of $10 million to support undergraduate research, and the University’s Honors College was renamed the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College, in recognition of his many contributions to the growth and enhancement of the University.

Most recently, Dr. Kern and Marnie Wildenthal made a planned gift to help further endow in perpetuity the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College.

“My brother spent most of his career as a university administrator at UT Dallas and has a special interest in the Honors College. We wanted to honor him and acknowledge his contributions by making a gift for this program,” said Kern Wildenthal, president emeritus of UT Southwestern Medical Center and past president and consultant at Children’s Medical Center Foundation. “For a quarter of a century, Hobson provided the continuity, the dedication and the vision that set the stage for UTD to become a great university. He believed in the school and its students and his colleagues, and his focus was to always look for ways to improve, to always seek and expect excellence.”

In 2019, UT Dallas’ Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies honored Hobson Wildenthal with the inaugural Edward M. Ackerman Leadership Award for his role in helping establish and enhance the groundbreaking center. Working with community supporters and founding former director Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor, Wildenthal led efforts to grow the Holocaust Studies Program, which was created in 1986.

Upon receiving the award, Wildenthal said, “Doing this particular job turned into one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. The education I received from Zsuzsanna and the great intellectuals who visited UT Dallas [has] been of immense personal value to me. I feel that I should have been paying tuition all these years, rather than being honored.”

Kern Wildenthal said his brother has always been humble about his accomplishments at UT Dallas, preferring to work behind the scenes and letting the successes of the University speak for themselves.

Said Hobson Wildenthal on one occasion: “I was profoundly fortunate to come to UT Dallas. The University’s potential for transformative change and growth was apparent when I came, but the reality of the past years of progress far outstrips what would have been predicted from any sober assessment in 1992. It has been a wonderful and fulfilling privilege to work with fellow faculty and administrators, past and current, and with enthusiastic students as we have built UT Dallas into a truly significant contributor to the life of the Dallas community and the state and to the education of many, many, great students — young people who will make major contributions to the future life of our nation and the world.”

In addition to his brother, Wildenthal is survived by his wife, Adele, and their five children: Rebecca Wildenthal, Bryan H. Wildenthal II, Lora Wildenthal, Kerry Wildenthal Fagelman and Andrea Wildenthal Hanson; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.