Civil War Union Army Officer, Scientist. A renowned chemist, educator and businessman, he taught the natural sciences at Williston Seminary before going to Germany for two years to study chemistry and botany at Goettingen, earning his PhD in 1852. From 1852 to 1867 he was a member of Amherst College's faculty as a Professor of Chemistry, Botany, and Zoology, and later served as one of the founding members of the Massachusetts Agricultural College and later its president. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he entered the Union Army with a commission of Major, 21st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry on July 19, 1861. He was successively promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on February 26, 1862 and Colonel and commander of the regiment on May 16, 1862 (replacing the previous commander, Colonel Augustus Morse, who resigned). He led the unit in the 1862 Peninsular Campaign, the Antietam Campaign, and at the Battle of Fredericksburg. He resigned his commission on April 22, 1863, stating he did so "due to the reduced condition of my regiment and my belief that I can be more useful at home than in the army under these circumstances". From 1876 to 1877, he traveled to Japan at the request of the Meiji government to establish an agricultural college at Sapporo. He helped introduce farming techniques suitable to Hokkaido conditions, and broadened students' minds to the outside world and to the spiritual sense of Christianity. Among his former students were Inazo Nitobe, Kanzo Uchimura and other prominent people of every field. He is still remembered in Japan for his famous parting words “Boys, be ambitious.” He is memorialized via a famous statue that stands on the outskirts of Sapporo and a bust on the campus of Hokkaido University. He is the subject of a book, “William Smith Clark: A Yankee in Hokkaido.” (Additional information by Russ Dodge).