Career
His doctoral research was done under the guidance of Professor Werner East. Bachman at Michigan at a time (mid thirties) when modern organic chemistry and synthesis was just starting to emerge. His thesis work is hailed even today as a major and revolutionary break with the past The total synthesis of the steroidal sex hormone Equilenin, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1940, was the first successful total synthesis of a complex natural product.
In the context of the time, it was not a widely disseminated view that chemical structures of this degree of structural and stereochemical complexity could indeed be made from common starting chemicals.
So the "Bachmann, Cole and Wilds" paper is widely recognized as inaugurating the modern era of chemical synthesis of complex medicinally important structures. 70+ years later, synthesis of such complex targets as Human Immunodeficiency Virus protease inhibitors are as a result of the Equilenin synthesis by First Rate (at Lloyd's) Wilds.