Richard Wildman

Rich grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, and, at one point during his youth, drought restrictions had been in place for over half his life. While in high school and college, he pursued dual interests in chemistry and outdoor exploration, eventually winding up with a B.S. in Chemistry from Yale and a leadership position with the Yale outdoors club. After a couple terrific years at Yale researching the composition of the Paleozoic atmosphere, Rich decided to return to the central environmental issue of his youth and take on questions of water scarcity. Continuing with his interests in chemistry, Rich focused on aquatic chemistry and water quality in rivers and reservoirs while earning a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. Along the way, he also dabbled in journalism, high school outreach, baseball, and theater, and he rowed on the varsity crew team at Yale.

Through a stroke of good fortune, Rich was able spend the final year and a half of his Ph.D. as a visiting student at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. What a change! Moving from the desert of Southern California to water-wealthy Switzerland greatly broadened Rich's perspective on water resources issues. Ancillary benefits of the experience include: learning a little German, greatly increasing his soccer skills, acquiring the ability to identify a dozen (or more) types of cheese, and understanding which types of chocolate are acceptable to his wife.

Rich is teaching at Quest because he believes strongly that the knowledge in the minds of research specialists isn't reaching bright undergraduates quickly enough. He wants to help students understand and value the natural world while also making sense of humanity's place in it.