t was nerve-racking. It was scary. His voice carried an anxious rattle as he worried that an attorney would gleefully pinpoint what he didn’t know. Each time he testified, he felt like he was defending his dissertation for his Ph.D. all over again.

But this time was different – no anxiety, no self-doubt. Expert witness Donald Wilkinson ’54 was scheduled to testify on behalf of the defendant in a DUI case, after gathering evidence showing that a combination of dentures and residual food particles had interfered with the man’s breath alcohol test. The opposition had hired a formidable expert witness – a chemist and criminalist with the state police lab – who also happened to be Wilkinson’s wife.

Although his wife had to bear witness in a different case on the day the DUI case was to be heard, Wilkinson knew exactly how he would have handled testifying opposite his spouse. “I would have just explained why she was wrong and not have been able to go home that night,” he says, laughing.

A retired chemistry professor, Wilkinson has testified in 25 civil and criminal cases at all levels of the court system in eight states, throughout his career. His interest in forensics also led him to advise the Delaware state police DUI program, identify harmful chemicals for the Delaware Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and develop traps that filter and preserve breath alcohol for evidence. His company, Toxtrap Inc., was created in 1981 to produce the traps.

While teaching chemistry at Delaware State University, Wilkinson received a major grant from the National Institutes of Health that led to an eight-year study on new methods for the analysis of drugs. Soon after, he initiated a forensics course at the university that taught students to analyze samples and defend their positions from a witness box in an actual courtroom.

That’s when Wilkinson decided to get into the courtroom, too. “You can’t teach a forensics course without testifying in court,” he says. Eager to gain valuable courtroom experience, Wilkinson started out by working as an expert witness and consultant for the Delaware state police.

He soon realized that he relished the challenges an expert witness faces in a courtroom. “You sit up in front of everybody and you basically have one person out there to almost make a fool out of you. One side is telling you you’re an expert, and the other side is trying to find out what you don’t know and catch your mistakes,” he says. “There’s a certain excitement in it.”

There’s often a feeling of apprehension, too, Wilkinson says. Making a mistake under oath can mean the end of an expert witness’s career. Attorneys repeatedly reword questions in an attempt to find inconsistencies in an expert witness’s testimony or to discover something an expert witness might not know.

The second time Wilkinson testified as an expert witness, in a Rochester, N.Y. courtroom, one attorney questioned him so much that the record of his testimony amounted to 450 pages. Wilkinson claims that he could fit all the information he knew about the topic on a single page.

But no matter how many questions he’s asked, Wilkinson says his ultimate goal is to tell the truth. While some expert witnesses don’t always give the full story, Wilkinson stands by his belief to be a seeker of truth rather than a defender of faith. He stressed this message to a group of scientists in Washington, D.C., in a talk titled “In Search of Truth.”

Wilkinson remembers with fondness one of the late Dr. Edith Douds’ (professor emerita of French) oft-spoken lines, “The mark of an educated person is someone who does something they don’t want to do and does it well.” This phrase became one of three principles that guide his professional life, he says. The others are to compensate for his weaknesses and not take himself too seriously.

After 42 years of teaching at the high school and college levels, 33 publications, more than 50 professional presentations and $4.5 million in grants, Wilkinson retired from Delaware State University in 2003. While he says he’s glad to be free of the tightly scheduled life of a professor, he remains active in chemistry research at DSU, continues quality control work at Toxtrap Inc., and reflects on his numerous activities.

“Life’s not very thrilling if you don’t use the ability you have,” he says.