Arthur Wallace was born on 4 January 1919 in Bear River City, Utah, and passed away on 11 October 2008 in Santa Monica, California, at age 89. Wallace received a BS in chemistry from Utah State University in 1943 and a PhD in soils and plant nutrition from Rutgers University in 1949. He was a professor of plant physiology at University of California, Los Angeles from 1949 to 1989. Wallace was elected Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy, of the Soil Science Society of America, of the Crop Science Society of America, and of the American Society for Horticultural Science.