Franklin Hiram King

Franklin Hiram King
Franklin Hiram King, from the frontispiece of Farmers of Forty Centuries (1911).
Born	8 June 1848 Whitewater, Wisconsin, United States
Died	4 August 1911 (1911-08-05) (aged 63) United States
Nationality	American
Fields	agricultural scientist
Institutions	University of Wisconsin–Madison
Known for	storage silo

Franklin Hiram King (8 June 1848 – 4 August 1911) was an American agricultural scientist who was born on a farm near Whitewater, Wisconsin, attended country schools, and received his professional training first at Whitewater State Normal School and then at Cornell University. King is now best remembered for his first-hand account of traditional agricultural practices in Asia, now regarded as an organic farming classic text.

King served as a professor of agricultural physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1888 until 1902. Interested in a wide range of subjects throughout his career, King made major contributions during these years in research and teaching that dealt with applications of physics to agriculture. Most attention was given to soil physics, for example, water-holding capacities of soils, moisture requirements of plants, aeration, movement of water in soils, movement of groundwater, the drafts of plows, and the lifting power of windmills; he also began studies of soil fertility. The impact of his career was greatest in the field of soil science. He has been called the father of soil physics in the United States.

King left Wisconsin to become chief of the Division of Soil Management in the USDA Bureau of Soils in Washington, D.C. in January 1902. His findings in the next two years, that the concentration of nutrients in soil solution was correlated with crop yields, began to undermine beliefs held strongly by the chief of the bureau about the relations of soil chemistry to plant growth and soil fertility. King was forced to resign but privately published several additional papers from his research during this period.