Historical Information

It is believed that the Department of Agronomy began around 1907, but curricula in agronomic subjects and crop experiments date as early as 1882, when Professor William O. Latta conducted experiments on corn, wheat, and oats. Today, the Agronomy Department regards Latta as Purdue’s “first agronomist.” Actual Agronomy courses first appeared in the 1905-1906 Purdue course catalog, and in 1908, Alfred T. Wiancko was appointed the first official head of the as the School of Agriculture’s Department of Agronomy. The department awarded its first masters of science degree in 1913 and its first PhD twenty-one years later. Agronomy awarded 1,375 graduate degrees by the end of 2005. Agronomy became a department within Purdue’s Agricultural Experiment Station in 1908.

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