Ray Lyman Wilbur (April 13, 1875 – June 26, 1949) was an American medical doctor who served as the third president of Stanford University and as the 31st United States Secretary of the Interior under President Herbert Hoover, also a Stanford alum.
Early and personal life
Wilbur was born in Boonesboro, Iowa, the son of attorney and businessman Dwight Locke Wilbur and the former Edna Maria Lyman. He was raised with a brother, Curtis D. Wilbur, who served as the U.S. Secretary of the Navy under President Calvin Coolidge, and was a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California. The Wilbur family moved to Riverside, California, when Ray Lyman was twelve.
Wilbur graduated from Riverside High School, then studied at Stanford University, receiving a B.A. degree in 1896 and an M.A. degree in 1897. He then studied at Cooper Medical College in San Francisco (then of the University of California, San Francisco, now the medical school of Stanford), receiving a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1899.
While a freshman at his Stanford home, Wilbur met future President Herbert Hoover, who was drumming up business on campus for a local laundry. The couple had five children (Jessica Wilbur Ely, Blake Colburn Wilbur, Dwight Locke Wilbur, Lois Wilbur Hopper, and Ray Lyman Wilbur, Jr.). Marguerite Wilbur died on December 24, 1946, at age 71.
Stanford University
Wilbur first became a member of Stanford's faculty in 1896, as an instructor in physiology. In 1900, Wilbur was made an assistant professor while simultaneously carrying on a busy medical practice. He was the only physician in the university community.
From 1903 to 1909, Wilbur practiced medicine full-time. In 1909, he became a professor of medicine and in 1911 was named dean of the new Stanford University School of Medicine, located at the former Cooper Medical College, where Wilbur had received his M.D. degree. While at the USFA, he coined the slogan "Food Will Win the War."
Wilbur served as the President of the American Medical Association from 1923 to 1924. In 1923, he was one of the doctors called in to consult when President Warren G. Harding fell ill in San Francisco, and was present at his deathbed. His son, Dwight Locke Wilbur, later followed in his footsteps as President of the AMA from 1968 until 1969. Wilbur belonged to several private men's clubs, including the Bohemian Club, the Pacific-Union Club, the Commonwealth Club and the University Club in San Francisco.
When the California Legislature established the State Park Commission in 1927, Wilbur was named to the original commission, along with Major Frederick Russell Burnham, W. F. Chandler, William Edward Colby, and Henry W. O'Melveny.
Secretary of the Interior
On March 5, 1929, President Hoover nominated Wilbur as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior confirmed by the Senate, and assumed office the same day. His tenure ended on March 4, 1933, as Hoover left office.
He wrote: "It is common talk that every individual is entitled to economic security. The only animals and birds I know that have economic security are those that have been domesticated—and the economic security they have is controlled by the barbed-wire fence, the butcher's knife and the desire of others. They are milked, skinned, egged or eaten up by their protectors." Hoover eulogized him as "my devoted friend and constant friend since boyhood."