The Wilder Brain Collection is a collection of brains maintained by the Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 Department of Psychology. The collection was created by professor of anatomy, Burt Green Wilder

Burt Green Wilder

Burt Green Wilder was an American comparative anatomist, born in Boston to David and Celia Colton Wilder. He graduated at Harvard , 1862; medical department, 1866). During part of the Civil War he served as surgeon of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry...

. Wilder founded the Cornell Brain Society in 1889 to collect the brains of "educated and orderly persons." He believed that much could be learned about psychology from studying the anatomy of the human brain. At its height, the collection contained over 600 and even as many as 1,200 brains and parts of brains. By the 1970's the collection had been neglected and enthusiasm for brain collecting had dimmed. The university culled the collection to 122 specimens.

Part of the collection is on display in Uris Hall on the Cornell campus. Brains on display include those of several notable individuals:

• Helen Hamilton Gardener
  Helen Hamilton Gardener
  Helen Hamilton Gardener , born Alice Chenoweth in Winchester, Va., was an American civil servant and suffragist who published many lectures, articles and books from 1885 to 1900 under the name Helen Hamilton Gardener, a name she was to legally adopt later.In 1907, Gardener settled in Washington,...
  
  , a suffragist who intended to prove the equality of the sexes through her contribution.

• Edward H. Rulloff
  Edward H. Rulloff
  Edward H. Rulloff was a noted philologist and criminal. Rulloff is also notable for his brain which as of 1970 is the second largest on record and can be seen on display at the psychology department at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.Rulloff was born near Saint John, New Brunswick to...
  
  , a philologist and murderer who possessed one of the largest recorded brains.

• Edward B. Titchener
  Edward B. Titchener
  Edward Bradford Titchener, D.Sc., Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D. was a British psychologist who studied under Wilhelm Wundt for several years. Titchener is best known for creating his version of psychology that described the structure of the mind; structuralism...
  
  , a 19th and 20th century psychologist.

• Henry Augustus Ward
  Henry Augustus Ward
  Henry Augustus Ward was an American naturalist and geologist, born in Rochester, New York.After attending Williams College and the Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, where he was an assistant of Louis Agassiz, he traveled in Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine, and studied at the Jardin des Plantes,...
  
  , naturalist.

• Burt Green Wilder
  Burt Green Wilder
  Burt Green Wilder was an American comparative anatomist, born in Boston to David and Celia Colton Wilder. He graduated at Harvard , 1862; medical department, 1866). During part of the Civil War he served as surgeon of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry...
  
  , Cornell professor of psychology and founder of the brain collection. Wilder also served as a surgeon with the 55th Massachusetts Regiment during the American Civil War
  American Civil War
  The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
  
  .

The collection also includes a piece of a pumpkin that was placed on the spire of McGraw Tower in 1997.