I recant on Who is whom but what of Who is him?

Though I was able to defend a case for who's whom based on parallelism, others insist on the correctness of who's who. I accept that the latter form is fine, based on the analogy of Who is he?. Even so we can find a place for both Who am I? and Who is me, as in "The 'who' you are talking about is me."

Though the form Who is he? is accepted, I suggest it harks back to Elizabethan English, when use of he was routine for the passive object of a sentence.

Consider, Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. But, these days, we should say, Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

I got my who-do workin'

Whom do you trust?

And really, it should be Who's Whom.

Another who-ism:

I can barely abide the use of who or whose as a possessive in a situation that lacks a human referent, as in:

The middle years of the century saw experimental collaboration in the study of natural history, whose precise details we unfortunately do not always know.

How do you do, Study of Natural History. A pleasure to make your acquaintance. You must be a very interesting person.

Try the old way:

The middle years of the century saw experimental collaboration in the study of natural history, the precise details of which we unfortunately do not always know.

I realize that to some that style seems stuffy. But that is only because someone else told you it was stuffy. It's fine.

On the other hand, I agree that in some sentences there is nothing for it but to use whose with a neutral noun. This oddity of our language came about, I suggest, because at one time only persons, and possibly a few animals, were thought able to possess anything, and so no word was available for relating a neutral noun and a property.

But as the language evolved that nicety was put aside. So we sometimes end up with the barbarism whose with a neutral noun.

I agree that the of which form doesn't always work for the possessive. When in a hurry, I have on occasion availed myself of the neutralist whose. Yet, when it comes to touchy grammatical stumbling blocks, it is often possible to rephrase sentences in order to avoid hassles.

We might recast the example sentence thus:

The middle years of the century saw experimental collaboration in the study of natural history, though we unfortunately do not know many of the precise details.