In 1929 he entered "government service" which I take to mean he started working at Edgewood Arsenal because in the thirties he published some standard fare chemistry papers which list him as a chemist from Aberdeen, MD:
Para Rubberseed Oil As a Substitute for Linseed Oil in Foundry Core Binders
Chemical Microscopy of Fats and Waxes
Lokombitsika Suggested As Cheaper Rival to Shellac
That last one is only a little write-up describing a paper he wrote on the subject and doesn't seem to be easily available. He must have been working with chemical weapons while he was making those breakthroughs because during the war he was moved from Edgewood Arsenal to Huntsville Arsenal as Chief of Operations:
Col. L. W. Greene was appointed Chief of Operations on 15 June 1942 when Colonel Ungetheum transferred to Rocky Mountain Arsenal.
You can see what they worked on here. Greene is mentioned as a civilian later so his rank of colonel is probably explained by the military preferring to commission their scientists as officers (I think it makes it easier to boss them around). Leslie Groves wanted to do the same to the Manhattan Project scientists but they refused. After the war is when Greene takes a more familiar form:
Military interest in psychochemicals stems from the late 1940s. L. Wilson Green of the Chemical Corps Technical Command at Edgewood proposed that modern military use of psychochemicals might permit the conquering of an enemy without the need for weapons of mass destruction. Such use, he suggested, might reduce the wholesale killing, human misery, and property destruction normally experienced in warfare. He proposed a search for a stable chemical with the capacity to produce mental abnormalities of military importance; 61 chemicals were suggested as a starting point for this search.
The citation for that is:
Taylor, J.R., and Johnson, W.N. Research Report Concerning the Use of Volunteers in Chemical Agent Research. DAIG-IN 21-75. Department of the Army, Office of the Inspector General and Auditor General, Washington, D.C. 1976.
And from a 3 December 1955 memo from Allen Dulles to the Secretary of Defense:
2. The Agency became interested in the potential importance of psychochemicals, primarily because of the enthusiasm and foresight of Dr. L. Wilson Greene, Technical Director of the Chemical and Radiological Laboratories at the Army Chemical Center. Dr. Greene's ideas were included in a report written by him in 1949 entitled “Psychochemical Warfare, a New Concept of War”.
...
5. This Agency's scientists who have been responsible for this research in psychochemicals have maintained close and effective liaison with various research and development groups in the Department of Defense who are aware of our interest and, in varying degrees, of our progress in psychochemicals. Some of these individuals are:
Dr. L. Wilson Greene, Technical Director, Chemical Corps, Chemical and Radiological Laboratories, Army Chemical Center
Dr. Bruce Dill, Scientific Director, Chemical Corps, Medical Laboratory, Army Chemical Center
Dr. Amendeo Marrazzi, a scientist at the Medical Laboratory, Army Chemical Center
Capt. Clifford P. Phoebus, Chief, Biological Sciences Division, Office of Naval Research
Brig. Gen. Don D. Flickinger, ARDC, U.S.A.F.
Lt. Col. Alexander Batlin, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Research and Development)
Note that Dr. Bruce Dill is actually Dr. David Bruce Dill and Dr. Amendeo Marrazzi is actually Dr. Amedeo Marrazzi.
In 1951 Greene had at least two publications. With J.H. Rothschild and George B. Wilson, "Report of Symposium IV, Chemistry and Physics of Radiation Dosimetry, Part II, Classified Papers, Conducted by Technical Command 18, 19 and 20 Sept. 1950 at Army Chemical Center, Maryland."
Radiation dosimetry is "the calculation of the absorbed dose in matter and tissue resulting from the exposure to ionizing radiation. It is a scientific subspecialty in the fields of health physics and medical physics that is focused on the calculation of internal and external doses from ionizing radiation."
And from a 19 January 1951 Science Magazine blurb:
The German Chemical Industry: a Bibliography of the Chemical, Metallurgical and Process Industries, prepared by L. Wilson Greene for the Office of Technical Services, Department of Commerce, is one of the most complete works relating to captured technology. The bibliography contains over 2,000 references with descriptive titles or abstracts, and includes a subject index, authors indexes, and cross-indexes with OTS, British, and U. S. military report numbers. Particularly helpful are sections dealing with translations and reports available from private publication services. The publication may be obtained from OTS, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington 25, D. C., for $10.
Amazon has a page for it but the book is unavailable as you would expect for an obscure book that is over fifty years old.
The next year he was awarded an honorary doctorate in engineering from his alma mater North Carolina State University. That is as close to being a doctor as he gets (from what I can tell) but as we see above, Dulles referred to him as doctor. (And note that he is listed as Greene here.)
A 30 May 1956 Science Magazine tells us:
L. Wilson Greene, who formerly was technical director of the Chemical and Radiological Laboratories at the Army Chemical Center, has been appointed chief technical adviser to the Chemical Corps.
A 6 October 1961 Science Magazine says:
L. Wilson Greene, chief technical adviser at the U.S. Army Chemical Research and Development Laboratories, has received the Army's Meritorious Civilian Service decoration. Greene retired last month after 32 years of government service.
That is where I got the 1929 date.
And finally there is a folder (number 10) in a box (number 196 of 459) containing his correspondence from 1938 concerning the Science Service which became Science News. There probably isn't anything incriminating in there but it might tell us a little about the man. Of course it i unavailable unless you have access to the Smithsonian's storage vault.
And that is what I can piece together with publicly available information. He wasn't Mengele. He wasn't a Paperclip scientist (though he no doubt worked with them as his book suggests).
, thanks to slim or pan (slim I think) who linked to it tho) .)