Walter Clay Lowdermilk (1888-1974) was a soil conservationist who worked in countries throughout the world to help protect and reclaim lands in order to better feed their population. Lowdermilk worked with the Belgian Relief Effort after World War I, in China in the 1920s to help avert famine, with the Soil Conservation Service in the United States, and in Palestine planning land and water use in support of the formation of Israel.
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Walter Clay Lowdermilk was born July 1, 1888 and died May 6, 1974 at the age of 85. He was named a Rhodes Scholar in 1911[1], attending Oxford after his undergraduate education at the University of Arizona. He married Inez Marks in August 1922. They had two children: Winifred Esther Lowdermilk (married Wilmot N. Hess) and William Francis Lowdermilk (deceased). Lowdermilk received his PhD from the University of California in 1929.[2]
"Thou shalt inherit the holy earth as a faithful steward conserving its resources and productivity from generation to generation. Thou shalt safeguard thy fields from soil erosion, thy living waters from drying up, thy forests from desolation, and protect thy hills from overgrazing by the herds, that thy descendants may have abundance forever. If any shall fail in this stewardship of the land, thy fruitful fields shall become sterile stony ground or wasting gullies, and thy descendants shall decrease and live in poverty or perish from off the face of the earth.
""The Eleventh Commandment" written and broadcast over the radio by Dr. Lowdermilk in Jerusalem during June 1939 was dedicated to the Palestinian Jewish villages whose good stewardship of the earth inspired this idea."[4]
Lowdermilk Department of Agricultural Engineering at Technion University in Israel is named in his honor, "the world-renowned American expert on soil conservation, who supported the development of the State of Israel, and guided and inspired this Department from its first days."[5]
Fellow American Geophysical Union, 1962. [2]