SEPT–OCT 2011, v OlumE 104, numbEr 1

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Features 32 crystal method Nadrian Seeman, SB’66, uses DNA not to study biology but as a building block for nano-tiny structures. By Ann Finkbeiner

38 librodome ... Reg Egg, Igloo: As quickly as students have dreamed up pet names for Mansueto, they’ve adopted the futuristic library as their own. By Benjamin Recchie, AB’03

46 science? fiction? SePT– OcT 2011 vOLuMe 104, NuMber 1 For 41 years Stanton Friedman, SB’55, SM’56, has traveled the world with a simple message: UFOs are real. By Lydialyle Gibson

56 lost & found Alzheimer’s has erased the stories behind Lou Fourcher’s (PhD’71) images, but his photographs of a demolished West Side neighborhood have stirred memories in former residents. By Jason Kelly

Departments 4 editor’s notes The Magazine found its own fairy godmother to design a new style that is distinctly UChicago.

5 letters Readers sound off on climate change, breast-feeding, and last issue’s letters about immigration.

15 uchicago Journal A resident artist turns a blighted block into a community hub, Japan’s commuter trains run with mechanized precision, the Medical Center performs a triple transplant, an economist says the middle class is all right, a doctor builds a floating clinic in Africa, and a cell biologist explains the science behind a good cup of coffee.

28 course work Students grapple with 1960s turbulence in historian Amy Dru Stanley’s course on the decade’s politics, counter culture, and social protest.

30 marketplace of ideas Members of the UChicago community discuss: Where’s the profit motive to keep nuclear power plants safe?

65 peer review The cover: People have Margaret Olin, AB’68, AM’77, PhD’82, describes a photograph that seen unidentified flying changed her life. Plus: Alumni News, Deaths, and Classifieds. objects in all sorts of everyday phenomena 96 lite of the mind (see page 46). Illustration As we redesigned the Magazine, the editors wondered, what would a by Gerard Dubois. UChicago-themed New Yorker look like? Sports Illustrated? More?

The University of Chicago Magazine is printed on paper See the full print issue of the University of Chicago Magazine; archives certified under the Sustainable back to December 1994; web-exclusive content; and links to our Facebook, Forestry Initiative® program. Twitter, and Flickr accounts at magazine.uchicago.edu.

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 3

EDITORˆS NOTES

Volume 104, Number 1, Sept–Oct 2011 Bibbidi bobbidi boo executive editor Mary Ruth Yoe BY AMY BRAVERMAN PUMA editor Amy Braverman Puma associate editors Lydialyle Gibson, Jason Kelly art director Guido Mendez alumni news editor Ruth E. Kott, AM’07 proofreader Rhonda L. Smith student interns Mitchell Kohles,’12; Christina Pillsbury, ’13 graphic designer Aaron Opie interactive content editor Joy Olivia Miller inderella at the ball is the with their version of a ball gown. The web developer Chris Wilczak same person, only bet - Magazine would be slightly smaller and contributing editors John Easton, AM’77; Carrie M. Golus, AB’91, AM’93; ter. The frocks she wears perfect bound, book- or journal-like. Brooke E. O’Neil, AM’04 to clean her stepmother’s Its covers, unlike newsstand publica- home might have been new tions, would have thought-provoking Editorial Office The University of Chicago when her stepsisters wore images and no cover lines, appealing Magazine, 401 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1000, Chicago, IL 60611. telephone them, but by the time we to our readers’ sense of curiosity. The 773.702.2163; fax 773.702.8836; meet her they’re ragged layouts would be free of frills and or- e-mail [email protected]. hand-me-downs. The ball namentation, letting words and images The Magazine is sent to all University of Chicago alumni. The University of Chicago gown that her fairy god- take center stage. Alumni News would Alumni Association has its offices at mother bestows not only be tinted a rosy hue, evoking a nostalgia 5555 South Woodlawn Avenue. telephone improves Cinderella’s outward appear- appropriate for that section. We editors 773.702.2150; fax 773.702.2166. ance but also makes her smile, stand were sitting taller in our chairs already. address changes 800.955.0065 or C [email protected]. tall, and exude confidence. We still had to put on the dress, stand For the University of Chicago Maga- still for alterations and fittings, and ride web magazine.uchicago.edu zine, it was time for a makeover. When our horse-drawn carriage to the ball. we last redesigned in 2002, styles were We hope that, like Cinderella, we’ve The University Of Chicago Magazine (ISSN-0041-9508) is published bimonthly different, and nine years later our need kept our true character, our focus on in- (Sept–Oct, Nov–Dec, Jan–Feb, Mar–Apr, for an update showed. So we found forming, provoking, and entertaining. May–June, and July–Aug) by the University a fairy godmother, the international Our staples are still alumni, faculty, of Chicago in cooperation with the Alumni design firm Pentagram, to work their and the larger UChicago community. Association, 5555 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637. Published continuously magic and help us find a new wardrobe, Yet we’re wrapped in more modern, since 1907. Periodicals postage paid at one distinctly University of Chicago. more engaging, and easier-to-follow Chicago and additional mailing offices. Two of the firm’s New York–based packaging. Some readers will like our postmaster Send address changes to The partners came to campus to get a feel for new look right away, others might take University of Chicago Magazine, Alumni Records, 1427 East 60th Street, Suite 120, the place, learn its history, meet with time to adjust, and some will hate it (see Chicago, IL 60637. deans and officers, and comb through Letters for where to send missives). the Magazine’s century of archives. We hope most of you will decide we’re © 2011 University of Chicago. A few months later they returned much the same, only better. Ivy League Magazine Network advertising and production office 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, 617.496.7207. director of sales development 1917 1953 1964 1986 Lawrence Brittan, 631.754.4264. chicago Mark Nugent, 773.755.9051. detroit Don Heth, 248.318.9489. new england & mid-atlantic Robert Fitta, 617.496.6631. new york Beth Bernstein, 908.654.5050; Mary Anne MacLean, 631.367.1988. southwest Dan Kellner, 972.529.9687. travel Northeast Media Inc, 203.255.8800. west coast John Buckingham, 310.478.3833.

The Magazine has gone through many style changes over the years.

4 the university of chicago magazine | sept –oct 2011

carbon continues to increase. Water, 140 million square miles of LETTERS earth’s surface, generates water vapor constantly. It traps the earth’s warmth, like carbon dioxide. Clouds (water va- por) reflect the sun’s energy back out The University hired whom? into space, never reaching the earth. He I read with wonderment the appointment of Mayor Richard II ( July–Aug/11) points out that “the atmosphere is a fluid” and of Henry Paulson ( July 12, 2011, UChicago News for Alumni and Friends e- and that “fluids yield ‘all sorts of … intri- newsletter) to the Harris School of Public Policy Studies in an effort to reinforce cate behavior.’” Carbon dioxide as the the great American tradition of “failing up.” Surely, it will be hard to beat Daley’s only cause of climate change is absurd. destruction of Chicago’s system of taxation by means of slushy tax increment fi- A better approach might be a study nance districts. Surely, it will be hard to beat Paulson’s record of conflicts-of-inter- of the cyclical nature of the sun and its est-ridden looting of the US economy. impact on the oceans. Yet there are even more soon-to-be- Richard C. Janzow, MBA’63 There are even more unemployed autocrats that the Univer- Wilmette, Illinois soon-to-be-unemployed sity should pursue to burnish its brand. Muammar al-Gadhafi would make a Nuance of stroke treatment autocrats that the great addition to the newly aggressive I enjoyed Lydialyle Gibson’s article University should pursue department of fine arts. He could start “Forward Stroke” (Next Generation, a fashion major, since he seems to be so July–Aug/11). As someone who does to burnish its brand. adept at millinery and capes. Bashar neurovascular research, I thought it al-Assad of Syria is a dictator-ophthal- would have been interesting if the au - mologist, a perfect addition to the medi- thor had mentioned that other methods cal school in these days of scary health-insurance reform. I predict that this very of using tissue plasminogen activator magazine would then have an essay by some fossilized immoralist of the Chicago (for example, by IV) are contraindi- school of economics describing how these change agents epitomize laissez-faire cated in hemorrhagic stroke. It’s re- and laissons détruire principles (if that is what they are), even though the defense markable that a drug used in a certain of Friedmanite economics is becoming quaint, antique, and malign. Yet it’s a win- way can be lifesaving and in another win-win-win situation, don’t you think? way be deadly for the same condition. Donald Gecewicz, AB’76, Chicago Samantha Schoeneman, AB’08 Chicago

Kudos to health-disparities doc Consider: would a public-employee When breast is best ... A remarkable and uplifting story. I’m pension fund today lock up securities Whoever selected that photograph to very glad to know that Monica Vela, for decades based on an invalidated accompany “Mother’s Milk” (Arts & MD’93, is out there (“Course of Treat- computer model and receive the expect- Sciences, July–Aug/11) betrays the bias ment,” July–Aug/11). She’s doing work ed return? Our world uses a comparable of writer Ruth E. Kott, AM’07, and in medical education that’s desperately model to explain climate change. The Joan Wolf, AM’92, PhD’97—a moth- needed. Thank you, and please convey correlation between anthropogenic er who isolates herself in the corner of my best wishes with tons of encourage- carbon dioxide and rising temperatures her child’s segregated room to feed her ment to Dr. Vela. is very poor; 1935 to 1970—scientists baby. This mom has more problems Mike Lawler, Chicago forecasted a new ice age. Before the Lit- than breast-feeding. “Not all mothers tle Ice Age, temperatures were higher enjoy breast-feeding” is a meaningless Questioning climate change than today without the presence of an- statement that has nothing to do with A glaring error occurred in the Investi- thropogenic carbon dioxide. Kott’s assertions. It’s not about enjoy- gations article “Smoke Signals” (July– The scientific reality of the carbon ment of breast-feeding or motherhood. Aug/11)—the accompanying photo of cycle is ignored. Without carbon diox- The fact is that artificial feeding smokestacks. Carbon dioxide is color- ide in our atmosphere and photosynthe- products, aka “formula,” are inferior less, odorless, and tasteless. The two sis, everything green dies. Minimizing in every way to breast milk. Even given smokestacks show other products of CO2 is nonsensical; meanwhile, natural Kott’s and Wolf’s assertions, the fact combustion. By implication, carbon dioxide is seen as a pollutant. It is not. Science? Politics? BLAST FROM THE PAST Are Raymond Pierrehumbert’s mathematical/computer models vali- Re your article on David Axelrod (AB’76) in the dated? What is the assurance that October/92 Magazine. I don’t know whether to admire they are correct and useful? We are or to be frightened by his ability to help political squandering huge investments (recent candidates win their elections. I suppose it depends on estimates $100 billion) if the dire pre- the character of the candidates he chooses to help. dictions fail to materialize. Roland H. Peterson, SB’37, St. Albans, West Virginia

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 5

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exact same opinion as oneself. If one LETTERS allows, and is in the proper mood, it is both sobering and entertaining. Nonetheless, reading the many let- ters ( July–Aug/11) excoriating the Magazine’s article concerning Joshua Hoyt, AM’95, and illegal immigration, my sincere gratitude, and left. I was appalled to find one fellow alum Over the next two years I also had reduce support for amnesty to vote the privilege to teach a section or two grubbing and the “perverted racial cal- of Western Civ, so I joined the other in- culus” that assumes Mexicans will vote structors for the weekly lunch meetings Democratic, and another withdraw his to debate how best to teach Pericles’s legacy support of the University owing “Funeral Oration,” Abelard’s History Aug/11 Letters section, on the article to the Magazine’s “distinct irreverence of My Calamities, or to argue with Karl about Joshua Hoyt, AM’95 (“Dream for those of us who are still dedicated Weintraub, AB’49, AM’52, PhD’57, Deferred,” May–June/11). Immigration to the notions of honor, duty, truthful- about whether Foucault was appropri- is a complex issue, particularly as it re- ness, and love of freedom and justice.” ate, useless, etc., for such an under- lates to intrafamily relations. My grand- One can only hope that they will see graduate course. I often talked with mother “followed the rules” and, fleeing their words in print and shake their Professor Gray about the course and my the pogroms as a teenager, escaped from heads at their own folly. It is one thing to goals, choices, and ideas. Again he lis - Pinsk to Chicago just after World War experience discomfort with the content tened patiently, asked careful questions, I. Her own mother and several siblings of an article in an alumni magazine, or and offered gentle but firm advice. I soon were not so lucky due to quotas imposed with the inherent bias that may seem to learned that he took his Civ course as se- in the early 1920s, so they—also “fol- appear in what is essentially a profile of a riously as anything he taught, reworking lowing the rules”—had to go to Argen- person with whom you may, quite justly, the readings and the assignments with tina instead. My grandmother’s life, disagree. It is another matter entirely to almost obsessive attention. and thus those of her children and de- impugn the honesty and character of I completed my thesis and graduated rivatively my own, were surely affected one’s intellectual or political opponents primarily because Charles Gray gave by this lack of a family support network. based on one’s disagreement with them. me his time and guidance. He read ev- The DREAM Act, which involves Martha Hoffman, AB’87 ery word through every molasses-like improving opportunities for those Brooklyn, New York chapter I gave him, sometimes the same who came to this country as children chapter more than once. He chased and consequently before they were A healthy dose of partisanship the point of every paragraph and each capable of controlling their actions or I would like to thank the University chapter, I imagine, like someone chas- destinies fully or at all, poses unique of Chicago Magazine and, indirectly, ing a fish in a flooded basement. But he questions of human agency, responsi- Joshua Hoyt, AM’95, for providing never complained, never shooed me bility, incentive, and policy optimiza- regular entertainment from the Letters away, returned each chapter with his tion. Given the Magazine’s readership, section. I wasn’t disappointed by the trademark penciled comments and sug- one would have expected a balanced July–Aug/11 issue’s crop responding gestions. He once told me, “Michael [al- and nuanced assessment of the relevant to your article on Hoyt and the Illinois ways “Michael”] you have a strikingly arguments and conundrums from a host Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee impressionistic way of reading a text.” of perspectives: ethics, sociology, law, Rights . They included the usual Milton I didn’t know what he meant, and the history, domestic politics, international Friedman, AM’33, acolytes rehearsing mystery of his claim brought me up a relations, religion, and so forth. ... their catechism, tea party MBAs try- bit short. But over the years I’ve come Please accept this letter as a belated ef- ing out theirs, Malthusian prophets of to understand how savvy he was at fort to weigh in for the proposition that doom, and alums with fond memories evaluating my abilities. He had paid at- the Hoyt piece raises interesting, com- of the good old days when immigrants tention to me, he told me the truth, and plex, and perhaps unanswerable ques- like “Diana,” the undocumented stu- there was never a moment when he was tions and was therefore an appropriate anything but patient, kind, and armed item for publication in the Magazine. with a gentle humor. Andrew S. Mine, AB’81, Chicago

I loved him for that. I often think The letters were a bender mark by illustration of him when I stand in front of a class, Civil action good reminder of the meet a student, and try my damnedest It’s always a good corrective to one’s to be a good teacher. I mourn his death. own worldview to read the letters in intellectual diversity of Mike Kugler, PhD’94 the University of Chicago Magazine. No the institution, which Orange City, Iowa matter the subject, one’s sensibilities are likely to be abused by one’s fellow as I recall made for How immigration shapes families curmudgeons, and the sensitive soul is combative classroom I was struck by the overwhelming taken aback to discover not all fellow number of vicious attacks, in the July– graduates of said university hold the discussions.

8 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

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LETTERS

dent activist described in the article, probably wouldn’t have been let in to the U of C in the first place. The letters excoriating Hoyt were a good reminder of the intellectual diversity of the institution, which as I recall made for combative classroom discussions. They’re a good remind- er, as well, of the point that a liberal education by itself doesn’t necessar- ily produce particularly thoughtful, compassionate, or intellectually hon- est people. (Or even ones with a basic Eric Fischer’s digital maps “make older cities look good,” says Gann. For command of geography: for example, more maps by Fischer, AB’95, see flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets. Mexico is in North America, not Cen- tral America.) So, in one letter we learn that low-paid immigrant agri- Plato’s republic sion personalities—as Congress con- cultural workers drive down wages The letters responding to the article sidered an immigration reform bill, we all by themselves, as if declining rates about Joshua Hoyt impelled me to read shifted (during a legislative break) from of unionization and Wall Street have it again. The subtitle clearly states the a representative form of government to had nothing to do with it. By this let - nature of Richard Mertens’s story: one where the people directly rule the ter writer’s logic, by the way, women “Joshua Hoyt Leads the Fight for Im- government. Plato ranked the demo- should be deported too, since they are migrants’ Rights in Illinois.” cratic form of rule just one step above also paid less for equal work. One correspondent found it to be being ruled by a despot—both inferior Then we get finger wagging at im- “grossly one-sided and overly sugges- to the representative rule of a republic. migrants who didn’t “follow the laws,” tive.” He continued, “Frankly, the Paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, as if the immigration laws alone are failure to edit this piece properly is ap- we had a republic—and have not been sacred, fair, and unbroken. ... And in palling.” In effect, he is challenging able to keep it. another letter, we get statistics culled the right of the Magazine to publish the But Joshua Hoyt is not deterred. from far-right nativist websites (cis article as written. The paradox is that “The culture has to change,” he says. .org) innocently presented as impartial this letter writer is exercising his First Mertens writes that his coalition aims facts. All these statistics purport to Amendment right to speak his mind, “to build connections between im- prove, of course, is what xenophobes and at the same time wanting the editor migrants and nonimmigrants and to already think they know about Latinos: to limit the right of Mertens to accu- bridge the cultural divide that has made that they are lazy, sexually promiscu- rately portray the lifework of Mr. Hoyt. immigration reform so difficult.” ous, unintelligent, and disloyal. Then Another writer took the position Richard M. Janopaul, AB’52 come the denunciations of the “Marx- that “we do have a democracy in this Oklahoma City, Oklahoma ist disease” that may motivate pro- country, and the voters in this democ- immigrant campaigners from one letter racy get to decide who deserves citizen- Diatribes dissected writer who forgets that all Chicago un- ship and who does not.” The implied I don’t recall if I read your May–June/11 dergrads are repeatedly exposed to the subtext here is that the voters already cover story “Dream Deferred,” about virus for their first two years. have decided this question. But what Joshua Hoyt’s (AM’95) work on behalf I’m not writing to excoriate the Mag- about Mr. Hoyt’s right to “lead the fight of those who immigrated to this coun- azine for printing the letters, and even if for immigrants’ rights,” and to organize try illegally. Maybe it got lost in the ava-

I made enough money to make alumni immigrants to petition the government lanche of reading material that crosses fischer eric by illustration donations, I wouldn’t threaten to with- for changes in current laws? my desk. But I did read the resulting draw them just because I disagree with Speaking of “democracy,” we might diatribes in your July–Aug/11 Letters so-and-so from the business school. So consider Plato’s Republic and recall that section. The alumni who attacked you thanks all around—to the subjects of our country was organized as a repub- forget the purpose of an alumni maga- your article who are putting their edu- lic, relying on elected representatives zine. You have a very different mission cation to work for equality, and to the to exercise their best judgments to de- from the Economist or Businessweek. letter writers for reminding us of the cide important matters, such as how In their apparent zeal to ship immi- obstacles in the way. And for the laugh. one becomes a citizen. Several years grants back to their countries of ori- John Patrick Leary, AB’01, Detroit ago—with the rise of political televi- gin—no matter how oppressive their

10 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

regimes or impoverished their citizen- ies mapped in my hometown. Although ry—these alumni also ignore the source the patterns show somewhat more seg- of America’s greatness. Economists regation than one would like, the map now predict that immigration will help still reminded me of former mayor Da- America escape the graying of the pop- vid Dinkins’s description of our city as ulation afflicting Western Europe and a “gorgeous mosaic.” Japan. Because of what they indicate John L. Gann Jr., AB’64 about the Magazine, your publication of Madison, Wisconsin these critical letters increased my pride in having graduated the University of Civil War redux Chicago and my admiration for our I have enjoyed the letters about the alumni magazine. causes of the Civil War greatly. Here David Sobelsohn, AB’74, Washington is my view, which I expressed in a col- umn in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin I have an Re immigration: ditto (“How the US Constitution Caused the Ivy League degree. A quick note to affirm the letters regard- Civil War,” April 13, 2011). The cause ing the Richard Mertens piece (“Dream was three sections of the US Consti- We’re continuing Deferred,” May–June/11). A very bad tution. First, as is generally known, the tradition with and disturbing bit of propaganda. slaves were counted as “three-fifths of Mark R. Aschliman, MD’80 a person.” This gave the slave-holding a Johnson MBA. Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin states a disproportionate influence in the US House of Representatives. Seeing not necessary for believing Few people have realized that this In their July–Aug/11 letter, Jane R. gave the slave states disproportionate Shoup, PhD’65, and Stefan P. Shoup, power over federal finances and over AM’64, discuss interactions between election of the president. Because “all ecological, political, and sociological bills for raising revenue” must origi- concerns. Certainly we are faced with a nate in the House, the slave states had situation of unprecedented complexity. a greater say over federal finances. Certainly unsustainable human activ- The biggest federal finance issue was ity (particularly the profligate waste the imposition of tariffs on imported of Earth’s built-in resources) is starting goods, which was a major, often the ma- to produce catastrophic consequences. jor, source of federal revenue in the 19th Your Ivy League degree is an In relation to their claim along the way century. The North, where slavery had invaluable asset. Enhance it that “One is either blind or in a state of virtually ceased early on, supported with an MBA from Johnson cognitive dissonance not to recognize tariffs, while the South opposed them. at Cornell University. Choose the onrush of severe ecological and eco- Finally, the Electoral College elected our two-year program, or nomic problems.” I would like to assure the president and vice president, both our one-year accelerated them that blindness does not prevent then and now. Because the number of recognition of the mess that our planet electors a state has varies by the number program. Either way, you’ll is in; I am not in a position to speak to of US Representatives it has, the South expand your connections cognitive dissonance. also had disproportionate influence in — and your options — as a Julie B. Lovins, AM’70, PhD’73 the election of the president. member of the worldwide Mountain View, California Even those Southerners who did Cornell network. not own slaves benefitted from this Urban rainbows system. Why should the states where Learn more or register The images in Amy Puma’s article on there were many slaves want to give up for an admissions event at Eric Fischer’s (AB’95) work (“Points of slavery or change the system? Interest,” May–June/11) do graphically Ann M. Lousin, JD’68, Chicago johnson.cornell.edu. what few in the media have done either graphically or verbally: they make old- The University of Chicago Magazine MBA AppLicAtion deAdLines: er cities look good. Contrast the vivid welcomes letters about its contents or about the Round 1 applications due reds, blues, greens, and golds in Chi - life of the University. Letters for publication october 12, 2011 cago, Philadelphia, and New York with must be signed and may be edited for space, Round 2 applications due the washed-out monochrome paleness clarity, and civility. To provide a range of november 30, 2011 of their suburbs. Is there perhaps some views and voices, we encourage letter writ- deeper symbolism here? ers to limit themselves to 300 words or fewer. And as a native New Yorker, I was Write: Editor, The University of Chicago pleased, though not surprised, to find Magazine, 401 North Michigan Avenue, the strongest colors (density) and rich- Suite 1000, Chicago, IL 60611. Or e-mail: est mix thereof (diversity) of all five cit- [email protected].

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 11

ena and engineering as the design and on the agenda creation of man-made artifacts. How- ever, with the evolution of technology the boundary between science and en- gineering has in many areas become blurred and even disappeared. One Complexity, change, and such powerful technological change is the ability to manipulate and design at the molecular scale. We expect that educational challenges the Institute for Molecular Engineer- President robert j. zimmer ing will have deep connections to both physical and biological sciences and anticipate degree programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It will offer a distinctive intellectual configuration for the area of molecu- lar design. The immediate task for the he University of Chicago director is to recruit a group of faculty is faced every day with leaders who will in turn define the spe- decisions about balance. cific directions of the institute. The approaches of the past The University took another major that have led to a history of step this year in opening the new Cen- remarkable achievement ter in Beijing, a new component in our confront innovation driven approach to globalization. We have al- by internal intellectual and ways been a University with an inter- educational urgency as well national perspective. About 30 percent as a changing ambient en- of our faculty and 25 percent of our to- vironment. The resulting tal student body are not US nationals. tension can be positive. The lessons To support the work of our faculty and tand achievements of the past provide a students in all fields who are interested potential context for innovation, while in China and the extraordinary chang- proposals for new endeavors may cre- es taking place there, as well as to en- ate great opportunity and lead us to test able multiple ongoing collaborations embedded assumptions. in China, a faculty committee recom- There are also dangers within this mended opening a major new center in tension. Without recognizing the en- Robert J. Zimmer, who began his Beijing. The first year of the center has during values of the University and sixth year as president of the Uni- been a great success and we expect the ensuring they are embedded in new versity of Chicago in July, leads off a activity to continue to build over time. opportunities we pursue, we could new Magazine department in which Here again, the approach we have tak- move in directions that do not rein- University leaders discuss initia- en in China is quite different from that force our fundamental missions and tives and issues of importance to of other universities. distinctiveness. On the other hand, the UChicago community. Another arena in which we have too rigid an adherence to the specifics em barked on a different and ambi- of the past can leave us with a paralyz- tious approach is that of pre-K–12 ing fear of major new undertakings school education. This is an area that and opportunities. Perhaps our single each case, the University is taking an has profound human consequences greatest danger is potential compla - approach that is distinctive from those and great meaning for our society as a cency—feeling too comfortable with of other institutions. whole. Several years ago, the Univer- our achievements without demand- This year we appointed the inau- sity closed our Department of Educa- ing of ourselves the ambition to find gural Pritzker director of the new tion. This was not an easy decision, as for the future innovative manifesta- Institute for Molecular Engineering. the department represented a tradi- tions of the enduring values that have Given that the University has not had tion that went back to John Dewey, guided our past. a formal engineering program nor of- who was recruited to the University Within the past year, we have made fered degrees in any type of engineer- by our first president, William Rainey significant progress on a number of ing, this initiative is a major step in an Harper. In its place, however, a new, kiar peter by photo new initiatives that have been driven area in which we believe we can make powerful, and distinctive approach by innovative faculty, which, aside a distinctive and important contribu- to this subject has emerged at the Uni- from the merits and excitement of the tion. The long-standing position of the versity. This is embodied in our Urban projects themselves, exhibit two com- University against having engineering Education Institute (UEI), which mon features. They each represent a was based on the difference between runs four charter school campuses on departure for the University, and in science as a study of natural phenom- the South Side of Chicago, the Con-

12 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

sortium on Chicago School Research, and an Urban Teacher Education Pro- gram. Alongside UEI, the Committee on Education is a multidisciplinary academic unit that brings the power of the disciplines to bear on issues of pre-K–12 education. One goal of this effort is to produce understanding about scalable innovation in the char- ter schools and the creation of tools to help implement change at scale. This is an example of a decision to realize the faculty’s ongoing commitment to understanding and impact in an im-

Perhaps our single greatest danger is potential complacency— feeling too comfortable with our achievements without demanding of ourselves the ambition to find for the future innovative manifestations of the enduring values that have guided our past.

portant field, but to do so in new and imaginative ways. Finally, this spring saw the opening of the new Mansueto Library adja- cent to Regenstein. While many other universities are only building off-site warehouses for certain library hold- ings, the Mansueto Library is a reflec- tion of our commitment to continue to make materials readily available to those who need it for their research. At the same time, the structure of the Mansueto Library is a dramatic inno- vation in storage, matching its dramat- ic architectural design. The tension between continuity and change will always be with us. It is our collective responsibility as a commu- nity to use this tension productively to ensure that our future is filled with new manifestations of the imagination and distinction that have represented the best of our past. ♦

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 13

IT’S A WAKE UP CALL FROM YOUR FINANCIAL ADVISOR. YOU SHOULD PROBABLY PICK IT UP.

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sept–oct 2011 ...... Fig. 1, 16 ...... Citations, 19 ...... Harper’s Index, 21 ...... For The Record, 22 ...... Original Source, 26

It’s as if he wants to get this part out of problems. “What we don’t consider community the way first: theaster Gates knows enough is the rich cultural legacy,” that the South Side of Chicago has Gates says, “the kind of cultural cu- long been burdened with a bad repu- riosity, the alternative histories. ... Culture tation—and that the reputation is at There is a deep intellectual reservoir least partially merited. “We know that has never been fully tapped. And there’s violence, and we know there’s if it has, its voice has never been ampli- wares gang activity,” Gates says. “We know fied loudly enough.” there’s not a strong economic core.” Gates, a University resident artist, Theaster Gates hopes to What Gates most wants to talk visual-arts lecturer, and director of transform a neighborhood about, however, is the potential that arts-program development, has dedi- through art. gets lost in the discussions of the cated himself to amplifying that voice. photo by lloyd degrane

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 15

His Dorchester Project is the most Dr. Wax, which was closing. He added “I’m having this conversation with ambitious example of his goal to find to the mix approximately 14,000 used my friends at the University of Chi- run-down spaces in struggling black books and thousands of photographic cago,” says Gates. “How can our stu - neighborhoods and transform them slides that the University of Chicago dents become more cultured? How do through art and culture. Although the was planning to discard. Every item we get our students more embedded South Side’s Grand Crossing neigh- serves a double purpose—arrayed in the cultural life of the city? How borhood serves as the locus of his throughout the home, each one be- do we ensure that our students have movement, Gates’s art has been the comes part of the overall decor while a voice and are engaged in the com- subject of exhibitions in other cities, also providing cultural material for munity? ... How do we make sure the including St. Louis and Seattle. He artists and other visitors, a conversa- community has access to the cultural has purchased property in St. Louis tion piece unto itself. life of the University? ... Is there a way with the idea of transforming blighted The house is the first of many spaces I can help contribute to that?” spaces there, as well. on the block that Gates, who has also With his Dorchester Project, Gates Gates, a West Side native who has purchased two vacated foreclosures is leading the discussion.—Jeff Carroll arts, religion, and urban planning de- nearby, plans to transform. For stig- grees from Iowa State University, has matized neighborhoods, he says, art accumulated an eclectic body of work can be the springboard to renaissance. from pottery to music—his Black “There’s dignity everywhere,” Gates Anthropology Monks of Mississippi ensemble in- says. “It’s easy to overlook because the cludes musician Leroy Bach, formerly people who write about culture in the of the alt-rock band Wilco. The ongo- city live north. The people who have Smart trains ing project in Grand Crossing, how - the capacity to create new cultural Japan’s claustrophobic commuter ever, promises to be his magnum opus. opportunities usually create them in a rail system operates with human The Dorchester Project’s center- place that seems economically viable, and technological precision. piece is a once-abandoned two-story where you can bank on a certain kind of house at 6916 South Dorchester. To person going to a certain kind of thing.” create what he hopes will become a For Gates, who joined the Universi- It’s Monday-morning rush hour in To- South Side cultural hub, where artists ty in 2007, his job is an opportunity to kyo, and the city is hungry. Train sta- and other visitors can congregate both bridge the gap between the campus arts tions devour people by the hundreds, informally and for planned events, culture and the surrounding neighbor- swallowing them down escalators and Gates went on a bargain spending hoods. He intends to connect the two onto platforms deep in their bowels. spree. He purchased the property for even more, developing a role with the It’s nearly impossible to reverse direc- $16,000. Then he bought 8,000 vinyl University under the working title, tion. Arms occasionally get broken. albums from a Hyde Park record store, “Director of Arts and Public Life.” A train glides into the station, its

FIG. 1 deciSion time pAtIEnCE In DECISIon MAKIng

8.4 the decisions consumers make 7.2 depend partly on who they think highly connected they’ll be in the future, says Chicago 7.2 Booth marketing professor oleg 5.7 to future selves Urminsky. those who believe they’ll change significantly—and feel less connected only distantly connected to their to future selves “future selves”—are more likely to make short-term choices. In a study chose retailer later Delayed gift certificates gift Delayed in the June Journal of Consumer chose retailer now briant nicole by graphic

Research, Urminsky and Columbia University collaborator Daniel a retailer for a gift certificate (fixed) or wait a year for one worth more. Bartels divided 18- to 29-year-old right away, while others could those who’d been told their current participants into two groups: one choose later (flexible).t o assess self wouldn’t change showed more told that their young adulthoods how connectedness affected the patience to wait for a larger reward, would see big changes, the second subjects’ decisions, researchers as shown above. the trend held that their identities were mostly then had them pick between a whether the retailer choice was set. Some participants had to select lesser-value certificate immediately fixed or flexible.—Lydialyle Gibson

16 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

learns from those decisions,” says Fisch. Each decision gets dispersed to the rest of the network so the system can operate smoothly, even during the frenzied rush hour. That dynam - ic, Fisch argues, produces a “radically new kind of urban space” where the environment reacts to city dwellers as they move through it. Tokyo’s train infrastructure has altered everyday life in other ways as well. Consider, Fisch says, the packed train cars where no one speaks, but rid- ers click away on smartphones, chatting online through “commuter networks.” “Their bodies are being trans - ported in one kind of network, but they’re surfing another one,” he says. The modern story of technology has Terminal officials pack more riders onto a Tokyo commuter train. focused on the division between the technological and the human, Fisch says. “Everybody is really connect- ed—and yet disconnected.” Ultimate- doors open, and the crowd parts as So accurate are the schedules, Fisch ly, he says, it’s a reality “where you hundreds more flow out. On the in- says, it’s not uncommon for a rush- really can’t make divisions between tercom, a melodic ditty speeds up its hour commuter to say she rides “the the human and the technological.” cadence, urging commuters to board. 7:43 a.m., third car, fourth door.” For —Brooke E. O’Neill, AM’04 When the music stops, the doors close. those who miss their train, another ar- Inside, people are packed so tightly rives in less than two minutes. it’s hard to breathe. Cars designed to At the heart of the system is a bal- medicine hold about 160 cram in 300 to 400. ance between exactitude and uncer- Faces are splayed against backs; el- tainty. With more than 12,000 trains bows dig into torsos. People clutch running each day, arrivals and depar- Triple smartphones and contort themselves tures must be timed within seconds. to check e-mail. No one speaks; Yet the crowds and the disturbingly they’re standing too close. regular rail suicides—an almost daily transplant “It’s an intimacy befitting lovers, occurrence since the Japanese econ- In a rare procedure, UChicago not commuters,” says Chicago anthro- omy collapsed in the early 1990s— doctors give a patient a new pologist michael Fisch, whose book means unpredictability must be part heart, liver, and kidney. project, Between the Lines: An An- of the transit equation. thropology of Love, Labor, and Death To tackle these challenges, Tokyo’s in Japan’s Commuter Train Network, network uses a sophisticated model Darryl Williams got winded while investigates the relationship between that breaks down the wall between man running a 10K race in Oak Park in Tokyo’s people and its transit. Part and machine, creating an environment 1995. It was puzzling because he was of an emerging subfield called the where technology incorporates irreg- in excellent shape. Over the next five anthropology of infrastructure, his ularity rather than trying to eliminate years he had irregular heartbeats and research explores how the train sys- it, argues Fisch, an assistant professor felt strange sensations in his chest. tem itself shapes—and reflects—the of anthropology and social sciences. None of the treatments his doctors tried rhythms of a digital city. “There’s no other system in the world made a difference. Carrying some 20 million people a that operates like this,” he says of the Allen Anderson, associate professor of day, the Japan rail network appears Autonomous Decentralized Transport medicine and director of the University’s dangerously overtaxed, the remnant Operation Control System, implemen- Advanced Heart Failure Program, met of a post–World War II demographic ted in 1996. Instead of one command Williams in 2000, when the arrhythmia shift that brought record numbers station instructing trains to speed up was becoming life threatening. Ander- into the city. “It’s a system that’s op- or slow down, the network is partly son diagnosed Williams with cardiac sar-

erating beyond capacity, a system that decentralized, so the trains’ comput- coidosis, an inflammatory heart disease shouldn’t work,” says Fisch, a Japan ers can adjust if faced with the unex- that affects about 18 people per 100,000 expert who spent months riding trains pected and refine an ever-changing annually, and gave him new medica- between 2004 and 2008. traffic map. tion. “We were able to control it for ten Yet it does work—with a precision “Basically, it’s a smart network. years,” Anderson says. “He did his part

michael jenner/getty images that would boggle Chicago El riders. The train itself makes decisions—and as well, by taking care of himself.”

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 17

a new heart and liver without a new kid- ney. “I decided that we would not wait until the patient got stable,” Becker says. She and her team worked fast. The surgery usually takes three to four hours. In this case, a mere 36 minutes passed between the incision and the moment blood began flowing to the new kidney. After more than 19 hours on the operating table, Williams became the tenth person in the United States—and the fourth at the Medical Center—to have a successful heart, liver, and kid- ney transplant. Within a week, Williams said, he felt better than he had in years. By July he reported feeling about 90 percent recovered. His rehabilitation included doctor-recommended aerobic work- outs on a treadmill and a recumbent bike, along with strength training that he did on his own. As his rehabilitation continues, Williams reports feeling close to 100 percent. Once a month he has blood drawn so Anderson, the heart-failure specialist, can make sure Williams’s body is not rejecting the heart. After the one-year By 2010 the inflammation spread to a good functioning liver. The liver has anniversary, he will require only an- his liver. Soon the ailing heart and liver to filter out toxins and promote coagu- nual checkups. put strain on his kidneys. Anderson de- lation. Similarly, a new liver won’t do Anderson believes that Williams cided that Williams’s only hope was a well without a good heart.” will have no limitations. He will be new heart, liver, and kidney. Time is another pressure. Once able to travel, exercise, and do the dai- The criteria to be considered for a harvested from the deceased donor, a ly activities he wants to do. “There’s a three-organ transplant are stringent. heart is good for only about five hours. good chance,” Anderson says, “that he Williams’s case was the subject of A liver can wait 18 hours, and a kidney will have a normal life.” many meetings with hematologists, can last for up to 48 hours. So the heart —Dianna Douglas surgeons, nutritionists, psychiatrists, goes in first. social workers, and infectious-disease The heart transplant, performed specialists. “The fundamental ques- by Jeevanandam, was over in about ARCHAeologY tion is: are you going to commit or- four hours, but the new organ was gans to this person?” says John Renz, struggling. “We had to maintain his professor of surgery and director of heart until he could get his liver,” Jee- Shards unseen center medical chicago of ahsan/university shahzad by photo the University’s Liver Transplant vanandam says. The surgeons used Program. “You have to look at all as- inotropes to stimulate the heart and a Archaeologist Hannah Chazin pects of a patient. And you have to feel balloon pump to keep oxygen flowing. searches for late Bronze Age that you are committing that precious Then Renz’s liver-transplant team artifacts in Armenia. resource well.” took over. “When the new liver went Williams, 55, had no other health in,” Renz says, “the heart got better problems that would complicate his re- and better.” At a five-by-ten-foot hillside trench in covery. He had a history of following By the time it was Yolanda Becker’s Armenia’s Aragatsotn region, a crew his doctors’ instructions. And he had turn to bring in a kidney-transplant of Armenian workers sings to Chi- a large family and many friends to sup- team, Williams had been in the operat- cago anthropology doctoral student port him. After three months in the ing room for almost 17 hours. Becker, Hannah Chazin, AB’08. Anna, Anna, hospital waiting for the transplants, professor of surgery and director of Sirrun Anna, “Anna, Anna, beautiful Williams was rolled into an operating the Kidney and Pancreas Program, Anna,” sings one man, recruited from room March 6. has done many multiple-organ trans- the nearby village. Valluvan Jeevanandam, professor plants. Sometimes it’s best, she says, “I led a crew when I worked in the and chief of cardiac and thoracic sur- for a heart-transplant patient to recov- Western US, but that was different gery, compares multiorgan heart trans- er before attempting to put in a kidney. because they were all Americans my plants to “walking a tight rope without But the donor kidney was aging, and age and had a degree in anthropology or a net under you. … People don’t do well the patient was limping along. None of archaeology,” Chazin tells me. “Most after any open-heart surgery without his physicians wanted Williams to have of these guys have years of field experi-

18 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

citations

Perks of education genetic ability to grow limbs. found that “flag-primed” For undocumented With organismal biology participants had shifted their immigrants, a US education postdoc Igor Schneider, voting intentions and political would seem to promise Shubin analyzed a human gene attitudes to the right. Carter college opportunities and switch—a DNA sequence repeated the experiment with job prospects for the future. controlling gene expression— a different group of voters in However, children of illegal that regulates limb spring 2010, when President immigrants often end up development. The researchers Obama and the Democrats working the same jobs as found the same switch in controlled the government, their parents, says Roberto several other species whose and found the same bias G. Gonzales, AM’99, an last common ancestor predates toward Republicans. assistant professor at the Tiktaalik: mice, chickens, School of Social Service frogs, zebrafish, and skates. To stressful drink Administration. Gonzales see if the genes functioned the Reaching for a pint after a recorded the life histories of same way, Schneider swapped difficult day may not relieve 150 undocumented men and the gene sequence from a fish stress—in fact, it may prolong women in the Los Angeles embryo into a mouse’s. The it. In a study published in the metropolitan area and found primitive fish DNA activated October Alcoholism: Clinical that even those with college gene expression in the mouse, and Experimental Research, or graduate degrees—31 of producing signs of a developing Flag poll? Republicans win. Medical Center research the 150—were barred from paw. This finding suggests associate Emma Childs pursuing their intended that the components of limb reports that alcohol can agitate careers because of their development existed for Chicago’s Decision Research stress. In her experiment, immigration status. Instead, hundreds of millions of years Lab. He found that exposure 25 healthy men engaged most of the 150 respondents before four-legged creatures to the American flag increases in a public-speaking task. wound up working construc- evolved. The results, which the chance that a citizen will Afterward half were given tion, cleaning, and food- Shubin says open “a whole vote Republican. In a study the equivalent of two drinks, service jobs. Gonzales’s study universe of questions,” were of nearly 200 undergraduates followed by a placebo 30 was published in the August published online July 15 in from strongly conservative minutes later. Another group American Sociological Review. the Proceedings of the National or liberal states, participants received the placebo first, Academy of Sciences. filled out questionnaires then the alcohol. Measuring from fins to feet about their political views and heart rate, blood pressure, and In 2004 University of Chicago old Glory and the GoP voting intentions. Half of the cortisol—a stress hormone— evolutionary biologist Neil The American flag is questionnaires had a small Childs found that stress can Shubin discovered an ancient considered a symbol of American flag in the survey’s lower alcohol’s power to transitional species between national unity—we think upper left corner. Carter intoxicate, as well as reduce its fish and land animals called that red, white, and blue conducted his experiment a pleasant effects, causing the Tiktaalik roseae. That discovery are nonpartisan. Not so, few weeks before the 2008 drinker to want more. led him to wonder when says Travis Carter, AB’01, presidential election and, —Mitchell Kohles, ’12, animals first developed the a postdoc and manager at following up afterward, and Christina Pillsbury, ’13

ence—one was even sent to study in the at Chicago through early 2011, ar - cient cultures discovered that obsidian

capital, but he had to go home to take rives to examine the day’s finds. The could be chipped into sharp knives, ar- care of his family before he could com- American codirector of the Project rowheads, and other bladed tools. plete his degree.” Most of them are not ArAGATS expedition Chazin is Even after centuries underneath used to having a woman chief. working on, Smith has worked in Ar- dirt and rock, the glass retains its cool, Chazin talks with the workers in menia since 1992, just after the fall of smooth sharpness. Chazin points to a Russian, which she studied for two the Soviet Union, and has surveyed rounded bump in the center. “This is years at Chicago, but she’s learning the entire region. He even knows the the bulb of percussion,” she says. “It’s Armenian words as well. She reminds small village where I work as an Eng- formed when obsidian is hit with an- the workers to dig carefully with their lish teacher in the Peace Corps, a town other stone to form a blade, a process shovels, excavating level by level, most Armenians have never heard of. called knapping. It indicates that this layer by layer, working around stones From the shards of pottery a few inch- was definitely a flake from a tool, rather than dislodging them, so as not es wide in Chazin’s bag, he can conjure worked on by humans.” The piece, to upset the strata or miss a piece of an entire vessel, a water jug, a formal less than an inch long, goes into an- pottery. She already has a gallon Zip - bowl, or a grain container. “Look,” he other bag of tiny tool shards. loc bag full of shards, some showing points out. “This is the handle.” It’s hard to dig a hole in Armenia intricate patterns carved by potters I take a shovel and begin scraping without hitting the remnants of an an- who lived more than 30 centuries ago. dirt. A glint catches my eye. It’s a flake cient civilization. Armenia was a vas- Chazin’s adviser, Cornell archae- of obsidian, volcanic glass used around sal state of the Persians, the Romans,

stefan zaklin/epa/newscom stefan ologist Adam T. Smith, who taught the world since Paleolithic times. An- the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 19

photo by samuel dolgin-gardner, ab’09 , ------and eyer — m

Bruce —Samuel Dolgin-Gardner, AB’09—SamuelDolgin-Gardner, The Chicago economist has been That survey, Meyer explains, ig- But the pulse of the American econ omy sounds different to a a McCormick Foundation professor at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies. In a paper to be published by the American Enterprise Institute, Meyer finds “considerable improve ment” in the material well-being of middle-class families over the past three decades. Median income and consumption both rose by more than 50 percent between 1980 and 2009. “The middle class is much better off than they were ten years ago,thanoffter muchthey30were years ago,”he bet says. “That’s a message that you don’t alwayshear.” studying how the United States mea sures poverty and material well-being since the early 1980s, when he was a graduate student at MIT. Onehe problem,says, stems from where the nation gets its data. Middle-class well-being numbers, for instance, come from in come reported in the Current Popula Survey,tionwhichgovernment the uses to calculate official unemployment, poverty, and other policy reports. nores tax credits, savings, and govern ment benefit programs such as food stamps and housing assistance that act like income, all of which contribute to higher standards of living (the study dump. “That was interesting,”says, “but ChazinI’m hoping to find some thing better this year. lookingWe’re complex the to gateway the for perhapsanother shrine.” Economics On the up and up Meyer Bruce Economist studies the myth of the squeeze. middle-class There’s a resounding drumbeat from economic doomsayers in America, an overture played by pundits and politi cians: the poor are getting poorer. The middleclassshrinking.is Theeconomy is worse for families than ever before. - - - - - Not all digs are successful. Last nian written on it is too new for me,” she says. Project ArAGATS, named for the highest mountain in the pres ex has Armenia, of Republic ent-day earlythesitesfromploredBronze Age to but period, Medieval the through day Chazin searches for artifactsthe late Bronze fromAge, between 1500 and 1150 BC, when the grassy hilltop well- a we’re sitting uncovered on was a stone citadel. excavations In2003 preserved late BronzeAge shrine. summer four trenches were excavat architectural Threeyielded ed. struc tures, along with large ceramic pots, but Chazin’s turned out to be a garbage - - - - -

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 Armenians are immensely proud Chazin is looking for even earlier Russians, and later the Soviets. believe, Armenians tianity arrived, Chris with the missions of the apostles Bar tholomew and Thaddeus, and Arme- nia became the world’s first officially Christian state in 301 AD. to have maintained their religionthrough centuries of dominance by pagan, Islamic, and communist pow ers. The Armenian alphabet was cre Bible the translate 406 AD to in ated coun the and language, local the into try’s landscape is dotted with ancient churchesand monasteries. civilizations. “Anything with Arme- 20 chazin digs her work excavating historic sites in Armenia. also investigates the poor’s improved more likely to have extra features such well-being). Other inaccuracies in- as power brakes, power steering, and clude under-reported income and in- sunroofs; most noticeably, the fraction william correct inflation estimates. of cars with air-conditioning rose more rainey Readjusting inflation alone, Meyer’s than 35 percentage points between harper’s calculations, done with coauthor James 1981 and 2004. More of those features index Sullivan from the University of Notre are now standard, Meyer says, “but Dame, show that the average median that’s the point. It reflects that what sTUDENT income rose by 46 percent between people expect and what your money 1980 and 2009, compared to the 17 can buy has changed a lot. It’s not that E-mail lisT percent increase that the government those features don’t have value; it’s that mEmbErs previously reported. “If we’re getting everybody is benefiting from improve- bad data, we’re going to make bad de- ments in the quality of cars and quality cisions,” Meyer says. “We’re going to of life in general.” UChicago Solar spend money inefficiently, we’re go- Meyer often fields questions about Car Team ing to spend money on the wrong peo- credit-based consumption. His an- ple”—those who don’t need it—“and swer: it all evens out. “If people are we’re going to think that some govern- overspending their means, then even- ment programs aren’t reaching as many tually they’re going to underspend 58 people as they are.” when they pay back debts or when they When the researchers looked at can no longer borrow.” Go at UChicago consumption, particularly middle- Given the current recession, he un- (a Chinese board game) class housing and automobile expen- derstands why many people don’t see ditures, a similar narrative emerged. the bigger picture. But step back, he Today middle-class homes are big- says, and those small peaks and troughs ger by nearly 300 square feet than of a struggling economy meld together. 69 they were in 1989. The prevalence of A single line ascends. It’s a middle-class air-conditioning, dishwashers, and moving, as it has always been, up. Federalist Society clothes dryers rose as well, while ex - “We should be doing less hand pensive problems such as plumbing wringing about the country falling and roof leaks declined sharply. apart,” Meyer says. “We should al- Car ownership and quality spiked ways be worried about our kids, but it 114 too, Meyer found. The fraction of doesn’t look like we’re going to leave middle-class families with more than them declining or worse living stan- Zombie Readiness one car rose by 4.4 percentage points dards. We may leave them other prob- Task Force between 1999 and 2009, to 37 percent. lems, but this doesn’t look like it’s one Those second and third cars were of them.”—Steven Yaccino 176 Secular Students Median Income and Consumption, 1980–2009 Alliance

65 K 60 K 55 K 50 K 215 45 K Objectivist Club 40 K 35 K

30 K median (2005 dollars) 25 K 228 20 K pre-tax money income 15 K Intervarsity Christian after-tax money income plus noncash benefits Fellowship 10 K consumption 5 K

Measured by consumption or income, the material well-being of the middle 266 class has improved. (Meyer’s calculations using Consumer Expenditure Survey

from “the material well-being of the poor and[consumption] the middle class since 1980” and Current Population Survey [income].)

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 21

for the record

developed the Bump iPhone supermarket; a four-screen Investments and a 1997 app, also received funding. movie theater; and a hotel. National Humanities Medal recipient, also was named a fellow. grant is a catalyst Jared Lewis, assistant professor in chemistry, wanted: molecular engineers received a $300,000 Searle Four named professorships grant to support his research have been created for the over the next three years. One Institute for Molecular of 15 Searle Scholars selected Engineering. Two separate from among 180 applicants anonymous gifts provided representing 126 universities funding to establish the and research institutions, professorships for the Lewis will explore new institute, a partnership with catalyst systems for efficient Argonne National Laboratory, wealth of notions chemical synthesis. which will recruit 24 faculty In June the Milton Friedman members over the next five to Institute for Research in eight years. Economics and the Becker eating globally Center on Chicago Price After a year of deliberation, dawson directs race center Theory merged to create the the University has introduced Michael Dawson, the John tomorrow’s payments today Becker Friedman Institute for new on-campus dining D. MacArthur distinguished Two fourth-year Pritzker Research in Economics. Nobel options. The Global Dining service professor in political students, Laura Blinkhorn laureate Gary Becker, AM’53, Initiative, a committee of science and the College, has and Maggie Moore, received PhD’55, is the institute’s students, staff, and faculty begun a three-year term as the American Medical chair, and Lars Peter Hansen, members, called for more director of the Center for Association’s 2011 Physicians the David Rockefeller flexibility and variety. New the Study of Race, Politics, of Tomorrow Scholarships, distinguished service professor features include extended and Culture. Dawson’s which repays the recipients’ in economics and statistics, is hours in dining venues and five research has focused on the medical-school loans. its research director. separate plans ranging from development of quantitative unlimited meals to as few as models of African American ten meals per week. Aramark political behavior, identity, a treasury of experience will remain the campus food and public opinion. Henry M. Paulson Jr. began service provider. a five-year position as a distinguished senior fellow sher returns to med center at the Harris School of Public After two years as a White Policy Studies on July 1. House adviser, Susan S. Sher Paulson, former CEO of returned to the University Goldman Sachs and a treasury of Chicago Medical Center secretary under President August 1, as executive vice George W. Bush, will arrange president for corporate research collaborations, strategy and public affairs. speaker series, conferences, In that role, Sher works with and workshops. He also plans to University President Robert J. Zimmer on national health-

open the independent Paulson office news chicago of university courtesy photos Institute, located on campus, care issues and on corporate to focus on strengthening US– partnerships, coordinates pritzker’s a charter member China relations. external-relations initiatives, Philanthropist and civic leader and develops corporate- Margot Pritzker, AM’01, urban developments relations strategy became chair of the University capital haul The University has purchased of Chicago Charter School’s In the past year, 11 companies the former Borders store governing board on July 1. started by Chicago Booth at 1539 East 53rd Street. hail philosophical fellows Pritzker, who has served as School of Business students The bookstore closed in R. Stephen Berry, the one of the 17 board members have attracted more than $85 March, and the University is James Franck distinguished since July 2007, will lead million in venture capital. pursuing retail, home goods, service professor emeritus in the oversight of the school’s Forty percent—or $34 entertainment, or restaurant chemistry, and Olufunmilayo four South Side campuses. million—went to Braintree, tenants. The acquisition is Olopade, director of the Faculty and administrators founded by Bryan Johnson, part of a University-led retail Center for Clinical Cancer from the University and the MBA’07, which helps revitalization in Hyde Park. Genetics, were elected fellows Urban Education Institute, companies process credit- Also part of the project is a of the American Philosophical parents from each of the four

card payments. Online food- Five Guys burger joint, which Society. Trustee Emeritus charter school campuses, and delivery service GrubHub and opens September 19; a Clarke’s Richard J. Franke, chair and community leaders make up Bump Technologies, which 24-hour diner; a Whole Foods CEO emeritus of the Nuveen the board.

22 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

schiller’s current collection at his Highland Park, Illinois, home includes about 250 american surrealist works.

the kitchen and up the staircase, black- rior Scene, depicting a Harlem brothel arts and-white prints in the den, and large with white johns; and a companion canvasses in the open gallery space he piece, Street Scene—Restaurant, which Art house and Suzanne added in back as their col- shows black prostitutes and a nervous- lection grew. looking white man approaching. After Philip Schiller, AB’55, built The Schillers cultivated their first the collection’s sale was announced, one of the country’s most collection for 35 years, focusing it in Virginia Mecklenburg, senior curator comprehensive collections. both style, which he calls American so- of the Smithsonian American Art Mu- cial commentary, and period, between seum, told the Columbus Dispatch that 1930 and 1970. It captured the century’s the Schillers’ was “one of the most fo- “There’s no reason in my background social upheaval, including the Great cused and comprehensive private col- for me to be interested in art,” says Depression, World War II, McCar- lections in the country.”

Philip schiller, U-High’52, AB’55. thyism, the civil-rights movement, and At first he bought by instinct. For “No one in my family collected.” He the Vietnam War. From 1995 to 1998, Schiller’s 40th birthday in 1976, he had enough curiosity to take art-appre- five dozen of their works toured the and Suzanne went to New York to

ciation courses in the College, and later country in an American Federation of survey the art scene. He had already his wife, Suzanne, “would grab me to Arts exhibition, In the Eye of the Storm: purchased one major piece, a Regi- go to the Art Institute,” but that was it. An Art of Conscience, 1930–1970. nald Marsh ink drawing of a young Yet at 75, Schiller, a real-estate at- In 2005 the Schillers sold around 400 woman walking down a street, which

torney and investor, has sold a major pieces, valued at an estimated $7 mil- tipped his interest in art about urban collection to a museum, and he’s now lion, to the Columbus Museum of Art. life. Schiller’s friend Dino D’Angelo, amassing a second collection at his The works included Ben Shahn’s 1956 AB’42, JD’44, a collector himself, had home in Highland Park, Illinois, near painting Study for Goyescas, in which a introduced Schiller to Marsh’s work. Lake Michigan. In the house, designed man who is part military and part reli- On D’Angelo’s advice, he and Su- by architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, gous leader simultaneously clasps his zanne visited a handful of dealers and framed art covers every wall: colorful hands and plays cat’s cradle over a pile galleries. They fell in love with Rob- and sometimes foreboding paintings in of corpses; Jacob Lawrence’s 1937 Inte- ert Gwathmey’s 1963 oil painting Cus- photo by jason smith

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 23

todian. In it a man and a woman sit in the foreground beside a rusted-out car and a scarecrow holding a watermelon. The rest of the painting is a deep yel- low, suggesting the brutal heat of a Southern summer. The Schillers paid $15,000 for it, in installments. “I now know the market much bet- ter than I did then,” Schiller writes in his 1999 book Buy What You Love: Con- fessions of an Art Addict, “and there is no question that we overpaid for Custodi- an.” Still, he’s glad they did. “Even to- day when I look at it and am hit by the heat of that punishing sun,” he writes, “I know that buying it was exactly the right thing to do.” Schiller’s aesthetic instincts eventually proved financially A boat delivers mosquito nets in the remote Lake Tanganyika region. sound. Since Gwathmey’s 1988 death, his paintings’ values have risen; Cus- todian was included in the Columbus museum sale. pectedly in February), cofounded the medicine Soon Schiller became a regular Lake Tanganyika Floating Health at New York galleries and eventu- Clinic, a nongovernmental organi- ally at auctions. He hung the works he Healing vessel zation that hopes to provide medical bought, either in Highland Park or at care to the millions of geographically his Florida winter home. “I knew I was Amy Lehman envisions treating isolated people of Lake Tanganyika, onto something,” he says, when art his- patients from isolated African the world’s longest freshwater lake— torians or curators would come for a villages aboard a hospital boat. people from Burundi, Democratic short visit and stay for hours. Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tan- Although many of his purchases zania, and Zambia. became good investments, he advises Amy Lehman was at a district hospital The boat has not yet been built—the collectors to buy art they love, pieces in Tanzania when a pregnant 16-year- clinic first must raise $6 million for con- they will want to look at every day. If old walked in, bleeding. Her undeliv- struction. But when finished, it will be you’re in it for the money, he writes, ered baby was already dead. The girl a floating regional hospital, staffed by a “Give it up. Your chances are so small had had an obstructed labor in Kala, a crew of 30–35 doctors, nurses, and ship it’s not worth trying.” In fact, “the rule tiny village bordering Lake Tangan- staff. The region’s understaffed and un- of thumb, at least with contemporary yika. “She was trying to deliver, and the dersupplied health centers and medical- art, is that 99 percent of what you buy baby [got] stuck,” Lehman says. She supply dispensaries will refer patients will be worth less than what you paid.” had walked and ridden buses for three to the clinic, which could either pick As his own collection narrowed days, hemorrhaging, trying to reach the people up on motor boats, “like a wa- in style and period, he began to feel hospital to have a Cesarean section. ter ambulance,” or airlift them using it “could be of importance,” Schiller By the time she made it there, “it a helicopter, which could land on the says. He wanted to keep the works to- would have been hard to save this 200-foot-long boat. The organization gether so they “could be understood as woman’s life if she had been at the Uni- also plans to help ramp up the first-line a whole.” The Columbus Museum of versity of Chicago medical intensive health centers, providing the medical Art bought the collection, adding to care unit.” Without blood available supplies and manpower to deliver pri- its contemporary holdings. Now the for a transfusion, she died. mary care and prevention services. Schillers visit their former paintings a In the future, Lehman, AB’96, Creating a mobile hospital makes few times a year. More often they look MD’05, MBA’05, imagines telling sense for several reasons, says Leh- at them in their art books. a very different story: the girl goes man, who first saw the dire state of Today their home is filled with art to the local medical dispensary, who the basin’s medical care while visit- again, this time 20th-century Ameri- calls a hospital boat on the lake. “Then ing the lake in 2007. First, given the can surrealism. They have around 250 we can pick up the woman or girl in region’s ongoing conflicts, hospitals frushone joel by photo pieces, Schiller says, “the makings of obstructed labor on an outboard mo - “have been overrun by rebel armies, a very interesting collection” and one tor boat,” she says, “and bring her back and all their assets have been taken.” “not as restricted” in period or subject and do a C-section, and the baby lives Second, the lake is the best way to matter. Although he doesn’t yet know and she lives.” reach lakeside villages. “Anybody

what will happen to these works, he In 2008 Lehman and Tanzanian- who’s worked with lake communi- enjoys looking at them every day. born Alwyn Andrew-Mziray, AB’94, ties,” Lehman says, knows that boats —Amy Braverman Puma MD’00, IMB’00 (who died unex- are “culturally integral. It’s not only

24 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

that it solves true logistics problems in man says. The clinic has local part- reels, rewinding the film, checking and terms of how you reach populations; ners, and Lehman and her crew know repairing splices, and adding your own it’s that populations recognize this as where to get the raw materials. To if necessary, noting the scenes where how they do things.” design the ship, they’ve hired Alion dots (those cigarette burns) appear to Lehman travels to Africa every few Science and Technology, which does mark the end of the reel, determining the months to do medical outreach for the business with the Department of De- print’s proper sound format and aspect lakeside communities. To get to the fense, and they will use a Tanzanian ratio. In Fight Club, Brad Pitt’s charac- southern Congo side, she takes three shipbuilding organization. “We know ter makes prep work more exciting by flights—Chicago to London; London everything about all this stuff,” says splicing in single frames of pornography. to Johannesburg, South Africa; and Lehman, “so it’s [just about] pulling a For 35 mm film—the most common Johannesburg to Lubumbashi, DRC. trigger.”—Ruth E. Kott, AM’07 size today—Doc uses a changeover sys- She then either drives for two-and- tem with two projectors, called Evelyn a-half days to the lake, gets a mining and Wanda for their east/west posi- company to take her in a charter, or tions. When the show starts, the film Campus life hops on a six-to-12-seat humanitarian runs through Evelyn until the reel is al- flight. No matter where in the basin most empty—about 20 minutes. Eight she’s trying to go, it’s several days of seconds before the reel’s end, the dots travel from Chicago. Booth school appear in the screen’s upper right-hand Lehman never imagined she’d be Volunteer projectionists at corner for an eighth of a second—four working with African ministries of Doc Films try to keep an old frames—and I turn on Wanda’s motor health, learning Swahili, and build- technology from flickering out. and raise the douser to let the light flood ing a ship in eastern Africa. “Years into the chamber. In the print’s final ago, what I was planning on becom- second, as the second reel is running ing was an academic general thoracic I remember watching Fight Club as a through Wanda, a second dot appears, surgeon,” Lehman says, not “think- 16-year-old and thinking I understood and I step on the changeover pedal to ing about naval architecture and engi- how movies made it onto the big screen. project Wanda’s image instead of Ev- neering, or how to build a ship in the But it wasn’t until volunteering at elyn’s, which is now just black filler, the middle of a landlocked lake in sub- Doc Films as a College first-year that I reel’s tail. If everything goes well, the Saharan Africa.” learned projection involves more than audience doesn’t notice. As she raises the money to build, watching the corner of the screen for Of course, Doc regulars know that Lehman is helping the villages in other “cigarette burns.” screenings don’t always run so smooth- ways: providing mosquito nets to pre- After three years in the booth, you ly. Projectionists have nightmares about vent malaria, still the top cause of death develop a checklist for prepping a film the bubbling, deep-colored metastasis in the region (its grip has lessened in print: transferring the film onto show on screen that signals a burning print much of sub-Saharan Africa), training local community health workers, and planning to offer surgery to repair fistu- las, prenatal care in the Congo and Tan- zania, and treatment for eye diseases in Burundi. She’s made deep connections in the villages—one local even named her baby son “Dr. Amy Lehman.” Lehman’s main goal is to reach more villages, helping as many people in the basin as her crew can. With her team, which includes the vessel consultant Brian Bartlett, MBA’09, as well as stateside fundraisers and African co- ordinators and consultants, Lehman has been focused on fundraising for the outreach projects. This fall she will launch a capital campaign to raise mon- ey for the ship. “If somebody plunked down [the $6 million] today”—not including an ideal endowment of $25–$30 million—“we could have the boat built in probably a year and a half, max,” says Lehman, who lives with her son, Max, a Lab Schools senior, in Chi- cago’s Bucktown neighborhood. as movies go digital and original prints become rare, the Doc films tradition

photo by mitchell kohles, ’12 “Everything is planned out,” Leh- of analog projection with student volunteers could be in jeopardy.

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 25

inside the projector—the xenon lamp through several projectors and appears manager position to maintain relations will torch a frame left stationary for on multiple screens. A multiplex can with distributors and handle Doc’s even half a second. Fortunately, few handle 12 or more screenings a night finances. Others proposed hiring full- of our mistakes have such inflamma- with one projectionist. time projectionists, cutting the volun- tory results. If a film breaks below the At Doc the process is less efficient, teer staff nearly in half. sound chamber, the outgoing film spills but it’s easier on the film. Using the Becca Hall, AB’10, a former Doc onto the floor in huge ribbons while the changeover system, we can screen ar- volunteer and cofounder of the projector continues to show the movie chival films that require careful han- Northwest Chicago Film Society, at- on screen. To recover, a projectionist dling. Kyle Westphal, AB’07, former tended the meeting: “Basically, Doc must find the broken end, reattach it to Doc programming chair and head pro- presently operates as if it’s still the 16 a new take-up reel, replace the original jectionist at the George Eastman House mm era,” she says, “when films were reel with the new one, guide the spilled in Rochester, New York, explained the available to anyone and striking new film back onto this new reel, and allow benefits in a San Francisco Film Festival prints was easy—and when the equip- the stronger tension of the take-up mo- interview: “It forces the projectionist ment used was simple enough for a tor to catch up to the film still running to actually be there during the screen- schoolteacher to use and maintain. through the projector. Unless the print ing and maintain the integrity of the All this puts the possibility of Doc is particularly rare or fragile, we can fix print by not cutting and resplicing it at continuing to exist as we’ve known it the spill without stopping the show or the heads and tails of every reel.” in serious jeopardy.” alerting the audience. Yet as distribution goes digital and It will be up to future volunteers to A projectionist’s skills are hard to film repositories become more selec- decide the fate of film on campus. As come by these days. In the 1970s the - tive about lending, Doc’s commitment part of the University community for aters adopted a less labor-intensive reel to showing original prints on analog more than 75 years, Doc claims the title system that used platters to bypass the equipment has become increasingly dif- of longest continually running studentchicago of university center, research collections special apf3-02381, files, photographic archival the courtesy photo changeover process. Most multiplexes ficult and expensive. In May 2010 Doc film society in the country. As I watch now use platters: all the film is wound volunteers and board members gathered a new group of volunteers thread the 35 onto one giant reel and fed through to discuss how to address the changes. mm film into the projector, I hope we the cinema so that the same print runs Some proposed establishing an office- don’t give that up.—Mitchell Kohles, ’12

original source fighting fair

From 1934 to 1955, the University of Chicago radio program Round Table provided a forum for genteel political discourse. Broadcast live from Mitchell Tower and syndicated nationwide on NBC radio, the weekly program embraced provocative topics—atomic warfare, McCarthyism, civil rights. Yet whether guests were University faculty, politicians, or public figures, cordiality prevailed. “In one way Round Table is the forerunner of Sunday morning TV talk shows,” says assistant professor of history Neil Verma, of Chicago Press, forthcoming), In a 1953 broadcast, for example, AM’04, PhD’08, “but in another was struck by the dearth of John Kenneth Galbraith cheerfully way, it’s an anomaly: an intellectual “gotcha” moments. Instead of a sparred with Milton Friedman, program in an anti-intellectual face-off between two speakers, the AM’33. Although their differences nation; a consensus-based show in show gathered three guests around were clear, the economists tried a medium known for acrimony.” an omnidirectional microphone to drive toward consensus, Reading program transcripts to consider issues from multiple concluding, “We are agreed that housed in the Regenstein Library, dimensions : “This was a deliberate [capitalism] has shown a great

Verma, author of Theater of the production decision to create an advance in the economic well- Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics and acoustic environment in which no being of the people of America.” American Radio Drama (University one person is louder than another.” —Elizabeth Station

26 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

interview Coffee science Cell biologist Stephanie Levi’s Night Labs series makes science accessible.

Molecular geneticist and cell biologist Stephanie Levi, PhD’09, wants people to understand what she does. To explain the Golgi apparatus, which she studied at Chicago, she uses a simile: it’s “a structure in the cell that is like the cell’s post office,” she says on her website, Science-is-Sexy .com. “The Golgi takes newly made proteins (the mail) and attaches a sugar molecule to them, which acts like a molecular zip code that tells the cell where to send the protein.”

She doesn’t stop at similes. To bring sci- ence to a wider population, in 2008 Levi, who coordinates Northeastern Illinois

University’s Student Center for Science Engagement, started Night Labs, a series of public talks about how science fits into everyday life. “Science intersects every- thing,” she says. After leading lectures on the science of sex and attraction and on the science of extinction, in June she hosted a Night Lab on the science of coffee. The talk, led by Chicago-based Intelligentsia’s light those. I will be having numerous form grind to the coffee beans, unlike green manager and buyer, Sarah Kluth, food programs in the coming years, an electric grinder, and I learned from filled the second floor at Schubas Tavern although this was my first. Sarah that you really want a uniform in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. grind to your coffee so that the surface Afterward Levi gave an interview about How do you make coffee at home? area of each grain of coffee is even, and what science can teach us about coffee. I have always used one of those Ital- the extraction of coffee into your water

—Ruth E. Kott, AM’07 ian stove-top coffeemakers—you put is even, giving a good-tasting cup. water in the bottom, coffee in a metal I also use purified water, not dis- why do a night Lab on coffee? filter right above that, and put it on the tilled or tap. Distilled has no minerals Night Lab is all about helping adults stove, and it percolates to a chamber in to attach to the molecules that give access science in an entertaining, en- the top, which you then pour into your coffee a great flavor, so you wind up joyable way, while highlighting sci- cup. I also have a French press and use with a really weak-tasting, flat cup of ence in their everyday lives. I have that mainly at work. I’m switching to coffee if you use it. Tap is loaded with

long been interested in doing pro - an automatic coffeemaker, however, chlorine, which gives you an off-tast- grams on food, since in addition to be- which, I learned from Sarah, gives the ing cup. Ideally, the temperature of ing a molecular geneticist, I’m a huge coffee preparer—me—less control. coffee needs to be pretty precise too— foodie who takes full advantage of Sarah shared with us that the ideal Chicago’s rich food culture. what did you learn from Kluth’s range of extracting a cup of coffee is I don’t know of anything more ubiq- talk? will it change the way you about 195–205 degrees Farenheit. uitous than a morning cup of joe, and I make coffee? [Finally] I will never, ever put cof- fell in love with Intelligentsia the first After the Night Lab event, I’m switch- fee in the fridge as a way of keeping it. time I took a sip of a cappuccino from ing to one of those gold filters instead of I will try to use my coffee within two one of their retail stores. There’s tons paper—the molecules that give coffee weeks of buying it. Sarah gave guests of science involved in every step of its aroma and complexity can stick to a of the Night Lab program a half pound the processing, brewing, and enjoy- paper filter. I now want to go out and get of coffee, and it had been roasted two

photo by jason smith ment of coffee, and I chose to high- a burr grinder as well; it provides a uni- days prior.

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 27

c death of soldier Ted Lavender. Ted of soldier death the for himself blames Cross, Jimmy the dissect title story. Its protagonist, students Lieutenant The facto.” post ex but it’s so evocative, “It’s says. Stanley warily,” this use would “Historians Vietnam. about stories of collection by CA by 1960sturbulence with grapple students storm, gathering a Amid Counter Culture work course 28 US soldiers killed. Then she writes writes she Then killed. soldiers US to compared killed Vietcong of ber num ratio”—the “kill writes Stanley says softly, ratio.” “Kill On the board, counted?” being victory is How here? sounprecedented is “What says. Stanley ritory,” O’Bri Tim en’s text, fictional first course’s ended. War Vietnam them were born after 1975, when the of All summer. this graduate who will those and fourth-years rising niors: se of kinds two and fall; Chicago the in at Booth studies begins who student Texas and one from Korea; a Chilean from student high-school a There’s inevitable. seems humid; and thunderstorm a hot oppressively is July this morning air The stays. by open propped windows casement just conditioning, “Most wars are about gaining ter gaining about are wars “Most Elizabeth, a rising fourth-year, fourth-year, rising a Elizabeth, the with begins discussion The diverse. but small is class The the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 sept–oct | magazine chicago of university the The Things They Carried Carried They Things The rr Ie Social Science 401 has no air air no has 401 Science Social helping. not are wind the in going deaf.” deaf.” going cial Protest. “I feel like I’m So and Culture, Counter course The 1960s: Politics, of history history of professor associate guys?” louder, little a talk we an ley

G The miniblindsTherattling urges her students in the the in students her urges olu S, A S, Amy Dru Stan Dru Amy

b ’91, AM’93 (1990),a ------Lieutenant Lieutenant Cross. have been Lavender or Any of you boys could wrong.” unforgivable an be would … enemies its to nation brave and small this abandon “To reads aloud: He language. emotive Johnson’s by struck is graduate, to soon year fourth- a Emil, keep.” to promise a have we because there are “We again: and again occurs which “promise,” Vietnam. Stanley points to the word in involvement US defending speech 1965 Johnson’s Lyndon from excerpt silent. remain others The no. says major, history third-year a Sanders, Finally question. the by seem aback men taken The I?” be could that think, you of any Did Cross. Lieutenant Or Lavender. been one have “could one, by students male the to pointing says, Stanley you,” or you or boys—you you thing.” chilling incredibly “An says, She soldier. one Vietcong of killing dol lars, 1960s in cost, “$400,000”—the “I go to an international school,” says says school,” international an to go “I Warin her country. is taught Vietnam to ask how the student, an high-school Stanley turns to Michelle, the Kore the Michelle, to turns Stanley an is list reading day’s the on Next of “Any class. the face to turns She

- - who has access to urban space,” says says space,” urban to access has who about “It’s community. the to open be would gym the of part only while population,”black primarily a place dis “would that Park Morningside sity proposed univer the building when a new gym flared in Tensions says. she Columbia,” of top on right sits “Harlem Manhattan: of raphy student. high-school Texas the Imani, says about,” complaining they’re part.” “A big Sanders. says system.” of the a part weren’t just they that felt or They government. the parents their and themselves tween about “the psychological distanceupset were be they free,” but Elizabeth, already says they’re that agree would free?” not were they like feel they did Why free. already were they me for “but says, Philippe dom, free their for fighting be to claimed Committee, Coordinating Strike bia Liberated of authors The grade. pation partici student’s of each part required a questions, discussion few a has prepared student, Chilean the Philippe, buildings. campus at sit-ins held dents stu angry where University, lumbia Co at protests 1968 the to on it’s Then sound. but blow without trees violently the war.” Outside, tragic “this opposes he why cadence preacher’s booming clip, Martin Luther YouTube King Jr. explains next in his the In shut. slams it window, a close to stands Elizabeth as n—r.” me called never Vietcong] [the “They draft: Vietnam the against statement famous his delivering Tube, on Youappears Ali Muhammad young A ceiling. the from lowers screen giant A lights. the off turn to Elizabeth asks it. about much talk doesn’t adds, Michelle tion, genera younger The War.” Korean the about more knew I wish “I says. she schools,” public in taught is War nam not how sure much “I’m Viet the nods: Michelle incredulous. asks, Sanders school?” American an as same the is same school.” the is American an as curriculum “The Michelle. - geog the clarify to stops Stanley what seeing time difficult a have “I were,” they time same the at “But “I answer. to struggle students The break. ten-minute a takes class The Just picked up has outside. wind The Stanley At end the of discussion, the curriculum school “An international , the statement of the Colum the of statement the , Columbia Columbia

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© Tony Frank/Sygma/Corbis anthology decade.” odd this it’s me, for So class. a in it studied have to old too but it of some through living was I when it understand to young too was “I because says, she 1960s, the on a course to teach wanted She Era. the early republic to the Progressive specializes in American history from Stanley Dru Amy Historian protests. Columbia the for famous justification that supplied who leader student issue.’” the not it’s but issue, the “‘It’s it?” controls “Who Stanley. Bob Dylan, on the set of his 1965 film for“Subterranean Homesick Blues,” provides a lesson in social protest. was arrested in 2010 after being loud loud being after 2010 in arrested was this.” like letter a writing myself see could I principal. the to letter a wrote “We says, she prob school, high her at lems bullying were there When Imani. distanced?” and detached feel you do this, read you As age. your kids were this—these of authors the be could “You asks. ley syllabus Required texts Required “Does this strike a chord?” the naming Emil, Stan adds Rudd,” “Mark says. Philippe phrase,” the was “What At UChicago, says Emil, a student student a Emil, says UChicago, At “It strikes a chord with me,” says

“Takin’ It to the Streets”: Streets”: the to It “Takin’ included the the included

- - 1954–1992 and America in Left New the and Christianity, Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, America Women’s Movement Changed Modern the How Open: Split World (2000), Kazin Michael and 1960s the War of The Civil Divided: America A Sixties Reader revised edition, 1993). reads. “Try Mature Singles Only.” Singles Mature “Try reads. it 40,” Over and “Single screen. the of bottom the at up pops ad an love?” to you “Don’t somebody want wails, Slick Grace As Woodstock. at performing Jimi Hendrix, then Jefferson Airplane action.” into me propel didn’t it but me, with chord a every struck have should It day. library the to go “I says. never I he “but went,” protests, sparking different a gave account, Students identification. in the Reg and, police say, not showing black and white, flipping through pages pages through flipping white, and black in Dylan, Bob videos: music modern to forerunner a clip, film a watch students the Then Blues.” Homesick terranean Stanley passes out the lyrics to “Sub to lyrics the out passes Stanley first again: YouTube up pulls Stanley The Struggle for Black Equality Equality Black for Struggle The

by Doug Rossinow (1998), (1998), Rossinow Doug by (2000), byRosen Ruth

by Maurice Isserman

by Harvard Sitkoff (1981; (1981; Sitkoff Harvard by (1995), as well as as well as (1995), the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 29 2011 sept–oct | magazine chicago of university the The The The The - and and (2011), (2011), films documentary silent agreement. in Sanders at pointing nods, Philippe anything.” advocating isn’t just “It major. political-science fourth-year a Charles, says it,” about hose.’” fire a around carry That / Bet those / from away stay ter ‘No-Doz’ try Don’t / tiptoes your on “Walk says Emil. government,” the lyrics. “It warns you how to deal with says Sanders. blows,’” wind the way which know here?” lyric key the “What’s of hand-lettered words from the song. for the other 70 percent. other the for account two papers grade; student’s of each 30 for percent accounts lasts three hours. Class participation meeting class each weeks; three into a ten-week course is compressed quarter, summer the During era. the from clips video numerous as well as (2002), Students also watched the the watched also Students “I see it’s a critique,” says Sanders. Sanders. says critique,” a it’s see “I paranoia of note strong a “There’s the through puzzle students The to weatherman a need don’t “‘You The Weather Underground Berkeley in the Sixties the in Berkeley

♦ Freedom Riders (1990), (1990),

-

than profits] has to do, perhaps, with the initiation and the design features at the beginning. For instance, even in the ’50s we knew about [poten - tially safer] pebble bed reactors. In the pages of the Bulletin, you can see articles about traveling wave reactors; you can see a lot of designs that were shelved, perhaps because we needed reactors that could also produce plu- tonium for our nuclear weapons. That is a possibility. But if we look at the life extension of some of these reactors—which are now 40, 50 years old, like the one at Fukushima—you have to ask yourself, why don’t we shut those down, because we know there are better designs out there? Are we interested enough in safety to say, let’s go full bore on some new designs that we are pretty sure are going to be a lot safer, rather than keep- ing around these old reactors, which, yes, may be cash cows, but that do pre- sent some really sticky problems. Where’s the profit A nuclear disaster anywhere is one everywhere. And surely the nuclear industry is clear about that, and they motive to keep nuclear understand it. But it’s the action in the face of that knowledge that leads me to power plants safe? believe that there’s a disconnect there.

Mark Peters You’re sort of going where I wanted to go. [The United States gets] 20 percent of our electric- ity from nuclear. There are certain n the wake of the March 11 Hussein Khalil I would like to com- realities that we face. I believe that earthquake and tsunami that ment on the earlier observation that 23 units have the same Mark I design damaged Japan’s Fukushima the nuclear-energy industry, for its [as the Fukushima reactor]. So what 1 nuclear power plant, four profit motivation, may not be empha- should the US do in response to Fuku- UChicago experts addressed sizing safety as strongly as it should be. shima, Kennette? “the risks, realities, and future If we look at Three Mile Island as an ex- of nuclear energy” during an ample, that accident was, first and fore- KB Clearly, we’ve already taken the April 21 panel discussion at the most, a financial disaster for the utility right steps. We’re talking about inspect- Gordon Center for Inte grative GPU, which owned the reactor. The re- ing existing plants, once again making Science: Hussein Khalil, lease of radioactivity was very minor. sure that all of the safety measures that MBA’96, director of Argonne The health effects were very minor. should be in place are in place. National Laboratory’s nuclear energy Today, of course, the same is true: all I believe that this would be a good idivision; Kennette Benedict, owners of these incredibly expensive time to take a very deep breath and a U-High’65, executive dir ector of the facilities have a tremendous incentive very big pause. … Let’s sit down and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; urban to keep them operating, to keep them think about this. I’m sure you at Ar- and labor economist Robert Topel, operating safely. And even in cases gonne are working on new designs all © diego azubel/epa/corbis director of the University’s Energy where [the reactors have] been paid off, the time. You would probably prefer Initiative; and moderator Mark Peters, they’re cash cows, and they’re of tre- that some newer techniques go into PhD’92, deputy director for programs at mendous value. So I just want to differ place. I know the Chinese, for in - Argonne. Watch the entire conversation, from the view that safety and econom- stance, have a pebble bed reactor that hosted by the Alumni Association in ics run counter to each other. they’ve been working on for ten years. conjunction with Argonne and the Our expert, [former Argonne director Harris Energy Policy Institute, Kennette Benedict I think [the im- Rob Rosner], tells me that the Ger- at mindonline.uchicago.edu. pression that safety is less a concern mans perfected this.

30 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

So there are some new designs term as well—are things that we con- around. If we’re going to build them, ceive could happen with the use of this why don’t we take a deep breath, energy source, not things that have pause, and say, maybe we should think happened with this energy source. about transformation of the industry. That’s not to deny that those things Rather than around the edges mak- are really important; it’s just that we A research challenge ing sure that we’ve still got the right haven’t seen the kinds of disasters, as things, and the backups to the back- yet, from our historical record, if we for us is to improve ups, and this in-depth defense, why act as frequentists in this, that are the the design of not just take a major break now? same as the ones we might conceive Rather than going ahead with a nucle- could happen in the future. these systems. ar renaissance, as it’s been called—one Hussein Khalil of [the Bulletin’s] authors, Alex Glaser MP The economic barriers to de - at Princeton, calls it an age of discov- veloping new plants, bringing new ery—this horrible disaster allows us to technologies online, are real. Quite take that historical analogy and think frankly, from my perspective, I don’t about this as a time for new discovery in disagree with you at all that it would nuclear technology, ones that will be, be nice to bring these new technolo- hopefully, much safer and take into ac- gies online, but when you talk to [Ex- count, at the outset, safety issues. elon CEO] John Rowe or someone This would be a good like that, there’s no incentive, from time to take a very HK I completely agree that there’s a his perspective. tremendous incentive to develop new deep breath and a reactors that have more inherent, more RT And there’s likely to be less incen- very big pause. intrinsic safety features, and we’ve tive, because now we’ve discovered in been doing this for some time at Ar- this country that we have a lot of natural Kennette Benedict gonne and at other research organiza- gas that, while it doesn’t have the same tions. A lot of these reactors, such as carbon advantages that nuclear has, it has the pebble bed reactor and the liquid a 25 percent smaller carbon footprint. metal sodium cooled reactor, which I don’t think we need to think about have additional passive characteristics, the scale of [nuclear] operations as a big have been developed to a fairly high de- impediment. Capital markets can han- gree of technical maturity, but none of dle that. They can get the investments Capital markets can them has been successfully commer- that will fund as big a plant as you want, cialized yet because it appears that they and they can look out into the future get the investments, can’t yet compete on an economic basis and see what the returns are. with the existing technology. But there’s a great deal of uncertain- but there’s uncertainty A research challenge for us is to im- ty about government policies and what about government prove the design of these systems and try the tax on carbon or something like to simplify them without compromising that might be; those are the kinds of policies. their innate safety features, but to try to impediments that I’m thinking about. Robert Topel bring them to commercial acceptance. It’s worth noting that we haven’t built a new plant since [1996]. That’s Robert Topel Let’s think about the a little bit misleading because it’s been costs of what we’ve been talking longer than that since we’ve built a about. Kennette referred to the “hor- refinery in this country, but we end rible” accident, and I agree that it’s sort up producing more fuel from refiner- of an extreme event, or “incident,” ies. The same thing is happening, as I as we used the word earlier. But let’s understand it, in nuclear plants. The The economic barriers keep in mind that 14,000 people died share of nuclear and our total use of to developing new in the tsunami, and no one has died as electricity has remained fairly con-

a result of the catastrophe at the plant stant, but we’re using a lot more elec- plants are real. itself. And few have died in the past ac- tricity, so it’s worth squeezing more Mark Peters cidents, although many people die in out of every plant or running them coal mines and other things related to more efficiently than they did before. other sources of energy. So it’s not as if, by not building plants, So most of the costs that we’re talk- the nuclear share or nuclear footprint ing about—and I’m using “costs” in in the electricity market is declining; an economic sense, and it’s cost in the in fact, it’s been maintained over all sense that I think you would use the those years. ◆

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 31

re#earch RYSTAL

METHODNadrian Seeman, SB’66, uses DNA not to study biology but rather as a building block for nano-tiny structures. by ann finkbeiner photo by jeff singer jeff by photo

Ned Seeman invented the field of structural DNA nanotechnology.

32 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

Seeman’s cube, based on research he published in Nature This illustration of a truncated octahedron shows each in 1991, “put DNA nanotech on the map.” edge with two double helical turns of DNA.

adrian Seeman walks to the podium to Sokol chair in chemistry at New York University, nor that in tell an audience of assorted scientists in 2010 he was a cowinner of the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience— Washington, DC, how to build things the biannual prize, designed to be the field’s Nobel, was first out of DNA. His first slide is his title, awarded in 2008. Nor does he say that he created the field of “DNA: Not Merely the Secret of Life”; structural DNA nanotechnology in the first place. his second slide is a naked lady. She’s The He does say that structural DNA nanotechnology now Dream by Henri Rousseau, and she’s has goals as diverse as nanoelectronics for faster comput- sitting, pale among ferns and lotuses, ers and for nanorobots that pick up nanoparticles and walk benignly observed by lions, birds, and like inchworms or do somersaults. Seeman runs through his snakes. She represents biology, Seeman slides, most of which show dense science, some of which says, which “is not what we’re talking show art that illustrates the science, and some of which show about.” For Seeman DNA is not just the genetic material by science so beautiful it looks like art. He began his research, he which life reproduces itself but a programmable Tinkertoy explains, out of frustration. He’d always been interested in Nhe arranges into structures that are nano-tiny—Tinkertoys what he calls “the edge of life,” meaning the large biological the size of nanometers, a billionth of a meter. He calls this molecules that carry information, the molecules of life. To work “structural DNA nanotechnology.” study those molecules, including DNA, he needed to make Seeman, SB’66, looks out at the audience, the annual crystals of them, but three years into his first faculty job, he conference of the American Association for the Advance- “had managed to crystallize nothing,” he says. So “to save my ment of Science, straight on—Midwestern direct, a little butt,” he decided that, rather than trying to crystallize DNA

amused, and not altogether sweet—and briefly reminds himself, he would make DNA make the crystals for him. illustrations courtesy ned seeman his listeners how DNA reproduces: its twin strands sepa- rate, then each becomes a template for its complementary eeman’s hair is wild, his shirt is blue, and his jacket is sort strand. “Anybody who’s been to kindergarten since 1960 of orange. He’s overly direct and a little profane. All in knows this,” he says. He explains how the original and all, he looks and talks as though he lives on the happy complementary strands snap together: “get these guys Sedge of anarchy. naked in a pot, and they pair up.” He shows how he’s used Seeman was born in 1945; his mother was a schoolteacher DNA’s complementarity to form the structures he wants and his father a salesman. His mother wanted to name him for it to form: squares, triangles, cubes, rhombohedrons. He’s her father, Nathan, but her father hadn’t liked his name, and be- taken 30 years to make these structures, but now, he says, sides, she wanted an unusual name that would build character. “I know where every atom is on these guys.” So his mother made one up: Nadrian. Nadrian didn’t like his He doesn’t say that he holds the Margaret and Herman name either and called himself Ned. He grew up in the Chicago

34 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

suburb of Highland Park, an only child, a quiet boy who liked enough to graduate but no better. reading. In eighth grade Seeman was put into high-school alge- He liked the idea of being a researcher, so with bad grades bra classes—Sputnik had gone up, the country panicked about but good GREs, he applied to graduate schools in chemis - its scientific competitiveness, and the government sped up try. He got into none of them. So he arranged to stay on at educating scientifically adept children—and he continued to Chicago and take biochemistry courses again. It didn’t go be fast-tracked through advanced math and science. He was much better. The graduate adviser, John H. Law, said he good at both, but the class that got under his skin was biology. should consider a new program at the University of Pitts- His teacher, John E. Broming, began the study of life at burgh in biological crystallography. This time he got in. the bottom: how atoms bonded to form molecules, how mol- Crystals are solids whose atoms form an orderly pattern; ecules were the components of cells, and how cells formed they’re geometry in action. Consider salt: alternating at- tissues, then organs, then organisms. For Seeman, the infor- oms of chlorine and sodium, stacked so the pattern contin- mation was galvanizing: biology was fundamentally chemi- ues, sodium always next to chlorine in every direction and cal, chemistry was fundamentally physical, and physics was in three dimensions. Crystallography is finding that pat- just plain fundamental, and you could choose the level at tern, that structure, and where in the structure each atom which you wanted to work, and all of it, Seeman thought, sits. When Watson and Crick figured out DNA’s helical went back to atoms. Toward the end of the course, Broming structure, they did it largely with crystallography. Seeman told his students about a biological molecule, whose struc- had barely heard of crystallography, but it appealed to his ture was discovered in 1953 by James D. Watson, PhB’46, sense of order and symmetry, it was fun, and he turned out SB’47, and Francis H. C. Crick, called deoxyribonucleic to be good at it. He earned his PhD in three years. acid, DNA, that somehow or other was the center of life. In 1972 Seeman went to MIT for his postdoc. He’d been The information was vague, but Seeman was impressed by working on the crystal structures of RNA and verified a the vagueness too: the center of life was a molecule? proposal by Watson and Crick about the way specific bases He graduated from high school in three years, at age 16. His paired up, in detail at the atomic level. That work won him parents wanted him to stay local for college, so he applied to the 1974 Sidhu award from the Pittsburgh Diffraction Soci- the University of Chicago. For the first time he met other stu- ety. The award came to a net $87 ($100, less a meeting reg- dents from all over the country, all as smart as he was or smart- istration fee and a banquet ticket to pick up the award), but er, all holding forth on interesting subjects he knew nothing it was his first professional recognition. LaterNature called about. “I was getting dipped in the mental peppermint,” he his research the “missing link” of nucleic acid structure. says, “that every first-year student at Chicago gets dipped in.” Two years after winning the Sidhu, Seeman was search- His third year, he took a biology course and learned more ing for a faculty position. The job market for all crystallog- about DNA. Each strand in the double helix is a lineup of raphers, not just the biological ones, was bad: of the hundred four different chemicals—four combinations of hydrogen, crystallography postdocs looking for jobs that year, only six carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen—called bases. The base ad - would succeed. Seeman found himself kicking his bedroom enine recognizes the base thymine; guanine recognizes cy- wall: he’d been working for almost a decade, he’d gotten tosine. The complementary bases click together and spiral some recognition, yet he couldn’t land a job. Finally, in 1977, up into a new double helix. Atoms get together into bases, by the time the hole in the bedroom wall was a half meter bases into DNA molecules: Seeman liked the logic. wide, he was offered a position at the State University of That same year, Seeman took biochemistry—his major, New York at Albany in the biology department. although he didn’t much like it. The field seemed focused The job was a bad match. His fellow biologists didn’t less on chemistry as a foundation of biological information share his appreciation for the chemistry and physics of bi- than on the biochemical cycles of nutrition and metabolism, ology; he felt intellectually isolated. He had longish hair one small molecule being turned into the next small mol- and wore sneakers and jeans at a time when senior male ecule, forming pathways, cycle after cycle drawn on huge faculty were more likely to wear jackets and ties. He was a charts. The charts required a lot of memorization, and bad match for the biology graduate students too; they were Seeman could imagine nothing more boring. He did well more interested in the hot new field of cloning, and they weren’t much attracted to Seeman’s crystallography. With- out graduate students, he couldn’t run a crystallography lab. Meanwhile, the field of biological crystallography had developed, and now crystallographers spent less time char- acterizing the structures of crystals and more time growing I was gettIng them. So although Seeman’s strength was quantitative and analytical, and although he hadn’t adequate manpower, he dIpped In the mental needed to spend time growing his own crystals. He couldn’t do it. Growing salt crystals is easy; grow- peppermInt that ing biological crystals is high art. The DNA molecules he wanted to study rarely form crystals in nature. The lucky re- searcher could force their crystallization by controlling pre- every fIrst-year cisely every single thing about the process—temperature, student at ChICago acidity, concentration. If not, the molecules took whatever shapes they wanted to, and time after time they didn’t want gets dIpped In. to be crystals. He’d have lunch every day with his friend

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 35

Ken Karlin, and in addition to complaining about the ad- $42,000 from the NIH, he bought a recently invented ma- ministration, worrying about meeting women, teaching chine that made DNA to order. He treated the machine like the more conservative Karlin how to swear, hoping they’d a baby. In 1988 a collaborator of Seeman’s became the chair be recognized for good work, and knowing that good work of New York University’s chemistry department and of- took years, they fretted about whether they’d get tenure. fered him a job in a more appropriate department with a lot In 1980, two years away from the tenure decision, See - of graduate students. Seeman took the job, moved his DNA man gave up on growing DNA crystals and decided instead machine to NYU, and he and his new students got to work. to make computer models of them. In particular, he began modeling one specific step in DNA’s metabolism. Two dou- uilding structures with DNA is a little like cooking ble helices unwind but only partially, leaving each helix with with ingredients that have a mind of their own. First two free ends that join up with free ends of the other helix—a his team decides what they want to make and sketch sort of a square dance where two couples break up and go off Bout a design. Next they either build a physical model with each other’s partners. The result is DNA restructured, or run the design through a computer model to see whether no longer a double helix but a cross, a two-dimensional junc- DNA will let them get away with it: a biological molecule tion with four arms, four strands: branched DNA. arranges itself into coils, folds, and contortions according Seeman thought that branched DNA might have more to its own rules, which biologists know only imperfectly. than four arms. He went to the campus pub to have a beer Then they work out the sequence of bases they want. and think about a six-arm junction, and for some reason he Strands with exactly that sequence are made either with remembered a woodcut by M. C. Escher called Depth. In Seeman’s machine, or, often these days, ordered commer- the image, ranks upon ranks of smiling fishes swim oblique- cially. The strands, looped and twisted, are put in a solu- ly toward the viewer, their bodies parallel, each one with tion and cooked to 70, 80, or 90 degrees Celsius until they two lateral fins and a dorsal fin and a ventral fin that, along straighten out and pair up. Over hours or days or weeks, with the heads and tails, made each fish a six-arm junction. they cool and condense out. If the DNA hasn’t formed the And if he joined the fishes—head to tail, lateral fins to later- intended design, Seeman and his colleagues have screwed al fins and vertical fins to vertical fins —they would make a up and need to go troubleshooting. “Nothing works the three-dimensional scaffolding of little cages, an apartment first time you do it,” Seeman says. He cites Hofstadter’s building of tiny rooms. It would look like a crystal. Law: “it always takes longer than you expect, even if you

To construct the building, he’d have to join the six-arm take into account Hofstadter’s Law.” junctions of DNA. He knew that genetic engineers could By 1991 they published in the journal Nature their first make DNA with what they called “sticky ends,” build- structure, a cube. But the cube couldn’t be put with other

ing DNA helices with one strand longer, hanging off the cubes into a three-dimensional scaffolding for a crystal be- end, and with a particular sequence of bases that in turn cause it was, Seeman says, “a floppy piece of crap, and you would join happily with its complementary sticky end. Put can’t make a crystal out of something that’s floppy.” Their sticky ends on the branched DNA, Seeman thought, and next structure, a truncated octahedron, had some loose they would “come together to form damn near anything, sticky ends that could in principle connect to the next trun- including crystals. So that was my little epiphany there.” cated octahedron, but the first one took two years to make That is, he could build an apartment building out of DNA, and it was floppy too. So they moved on to other shapes, and into each room he could place any biological molecule so trying to find ones that were interesting and nonfloppy and that whether or not the molecules wanted to, they’d be ar - repeatable in a timely manner. ranged into a crystal. By analyzing that crystal, he could be All along, Seeman and his team worked pretty much a crystallographer again. To celebrate, he had another beer. alone, until they published their floppy cube and it was ad-

By 1982 he had put together his tenure package—in- mired in the popular-science press. Afterward, it became cluding his epiphany, mostly theory, with no successful increasingly clear that, by treating DNA less like a biologi- experiments—and went off to Leiden University in the cal molecule and more like an architectural widget, Seeman Netherlands to work with a chemist who offered to teach had created a new field, structural DNA nanotechnology. him to make his own sticky-ended branched DNA—which The DNA structures qualified as nanotechnology be- he did, he says, but “really badly.” In the meantime, he’d cause they were between a few and a hundred nanometers been awarded tenure at Albany; a few years later, with across. Nanotechnology itself is not really a distinct field, any more than “kilotechnology,” the technology of kilo- meter-scale things, would be. It’s an umbrella term for any number of tiny technologies made from any number of mate- rials. Since 1998 its federal funding has been coordinated by after 25 years the multi-agency National Nanotechnology Initiative, and the science is housed in centers whose titles include words of one-night like nanomaterials, nanomanufacturing, nanobiotechnol- ogy, nanomedicine, nanoconductors, nanomechanical. In stands, suddenly the mid-1980s nanotechnology had been more promise than practice, and when Seeman invented his subfield of DNA i’m an overnight nanotechnology, he had only just heard the term. It made him feel like M. Jourdain in Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, success. who was delighted to discover that he had been speaking

36 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

Over a beer at the campus pub, Seeman had an epiphany These triangles represent “the cavity in the first de- when he recalled the M. C. Escher woodcut Depth. signed crystal that we made,” Seeman says.

prose all his life. By now Seeman was getting grants, he had whole notion of this DNA Tinkertoy could be used for a good students, and around 1999, “after 25 years of one-night gazillion things,” says Seeman: DNA tweezers can open stands,” he says, quoting an old show-business saying, “sud- and close; DNA baskets can hold things. Labs make DNA denly I’m an overnight success.” nanotubes and nanoboxes; one lab makes DNA nanoflasks. During the next decade the field blossomed. A scientist But no one has done what Seeman wanted to do in the first at another lab used some of Seeman’s work and invented place: build a DNA apartment building with the same bio - DNA origami, double helices folded to form a large flat logical macromolecules in each room and do crystallography surface, a floor, from which little snippets of sticky-ended on that macromolecule. So far Seeman’s lab has individual DNA stick up. Seeman attached those snippets to strands rooms shaped like triangles stacked in a building shaped like of DNA that had been engineered into a little pivotable a rhombohedron. Seeman knows exactly what each room arm. Another scientist used a DNA origami floor and built looks like and where every atom in it is because he designed a four-legged DNA spider to walk across it: the legs are se- it that way. Crystallography on DNA apartment buildings quenced to attach to the sticky ends of the snippets; then could be used to design drugs to fit certain targets, and some an enzyme cuts one leg’s attachment, and that leg moves on day such a building could assemble itself. He hasn’t yet put to the next snippet; then the enzyme cuts the second leg’s the macromolecules into the rooms. “We’re working on it,” attachments, and it moves to the snippet after that. See- says Seeman. “Nothing is as easy as it looks.” man built such a walker with four legs and three arms, so it With structural DNA nanotechnology now such a large could not only crawl but could also pick up a nanoparticle field, Seeman takes comfort in the diffusion of responsibil- and carry it to another snippet and either drop it off or pick ity: “We don’t have to make all the discoveries,” he says. up another one—a nanoscale assembly line. “We don’t have to make all the mistakes.” Another comfort Just what all this is good for is still a little unclear; a June is personal: “I’m still the old man in the field, and I get a 3 Science article says the field is still doing the basic science little recognition for that.” In 1995 Seeman won the Feyn- necessary for real-world applications. So far, scientists man Prize, and in 2010 he shared the Kavli Prize, which have learned to begin with bases that they string together was 5,000 times larger than his first $100 award. When into DNA strands that assemble themselves into three- he summarizes his career, he seems more impressed by dimensional structures that further assemble themselves his frustrations and near failures than by his eventual suc- into designed crystals—a level of control that seemed im- cess. Still, prizes and a proliferating field—doesn’t that feel possible 30 years ago when Seeman started. Today the ba- good? “It does feel good,” he says. “It’s exciting that there’s sic science of structural DNA nanotechnology is practiced a whole field based on what I was thinking about, drinking

m. c. escher’s depth © 2011 the m. c. escher company–holland.in all rights reserved; illustrationmore courtesy ned seeman than 60 labs, all going in different directions. “The a beer, in 1980.” ◆

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 37

architecture

Cool hue: Mansueto’s 691 glass panels have three layers, filter 98 percent of UV rays, and reject 73 percent of solar heat.

By evening the Mansueto Library emits a glow from its base to the ellipse’s highest point, 35 feet.

he critics have visited the Joe and Rika lation system), a map of the Chinese city Fuzhou, dating Mansueto Library, had their say, and from between 1860 and 1911, sits on a suction table, where left: the Chicago Tribune praised its “in - a vacuum gently holds the delicate paper in place while the geniously conceived and largely well- conservators work. Lying nearby is a 1949 map of London executed design,” and Wired hailed it as that had been folded for so long that it broke along the pa- “the library of the future.” By summer, per’s brittle creases. Lindsey and her two-person staff had organized tours for students and staff pieced it back together, matching up every lane and alley, had given way to visits by prospective with Japanese kozo tissue and wheat-starch paste. A new students and parents who wandered in backlit table made that job considerably easier. In fact, ev- and snapped photos. Jam-packed this past ery aspect of their work has gotten easier with the move, spring with students trying out the most Lindsey says. Their former quarters in the Regenstein popular study space on campus, the sunny reading room were so cramped that it was difficult to work on more than was now less than half full. Two months after the library one thing at once—to say nothing of spreading out four Topened its doors in May, the ordinary routines of daily life large maps simultaneously. Now, she says, they have “space in Mansueto were taking shape. for people, space for items, space for equipment”—includ- The grand reading room and circulation service cen- ing paper presses, a sink to wash and deacidify paper, and ter occupy slightly more than half of the space under the a freezer to halt water damage or kill insects that feed on Helmut Jahn–designed dome. In the northwest quarter sits books, such as silverfish or moths. the conservation laboratory, where Ann Lindsey, head of In the digitization laboratory next to conservation, a conservation at the University of Chicago Library, is busy volume of Diderot’s 18th-century Encyclopédie—one of the flattening out maps. On work tables lie a pair of partially first encyclopedias—rests in a wooden cradle. The cradle, hand-drawn and -colored maps of Chicago Heights, Illi- draped in cloth, supports large books while they’re held nois, dating from 1906 and 1907. Inside the solvent room open for photographing. A digital scanning back camera, (a freestanding space under the dome with its own venti - mounted on a copy stand above the cradle, is set to take

40 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

By day plenty of sunshine lights the 180 seats in Mansueto’s Grand Reading Room.

pictures of the book’s illustration plates, adding to the large journal runs into 24,000 bins and elephant folios into Encyclopédie’s online version produced by the Project for 1,200 racks that comprise the automated retrieval system— American and French Research on the Treasury of the the largest, Vaughan says, in North America. French Language. Before the digitization group settled in “We believe that having materials close by enhances Mansueto, it had been in temporary space over the past few their use and that storing them remotely will do the op- years, explains Kathy Arthur, the library’s head of digitiza- posite,” library director Judith Nadler told the University tion. The new space is more than twice as large and couldn’t News Office this past spring. Placing them in the auto- open soon enough: by July the digitization facilities were mated storage racks not only keeps them on campus (some booked solid for the coming academic year. had been in temporary storage in Indiana) but also frees The dome, its 691 unique glass panels, the reading room, up shelf space for materials more likely to benefit patrons circulation desk, and the preservation spaces are all just while browsing. the tip of the iceberg. Mansueto’s raison d’être is its high- With students loading bins and racks this summer, density automated storage system. The racks occupy a Vaughan notes, the basement will likely never be this busy five-story cavern below ground, with room for 3.5 million again. Once the work is finished, a normal day will find the volumes. By the end of the summer, explains Jim Vaughan, basement bereft of life; the environment will hover at 60 assistant director for access and facilities services at the li- degrees and 30 percent relative humidity, and the spindly brary, the automated storage system will be one-third full, yellow robotic cranes and lifts will do their jobs in the dark. with the remainder reserved for future transfers, to make Mansueto’s capacity will let the library keep housing shelf space in other campus libraries available for browsing newly acquired works for another two decades. What hap- future acquisitions. pens after that is anyone’s guess, considering how rapidly Stairways and an elevator on the dome’s perimeter lead digital media is changing the world of publishing. But a down 55 feet to the building’s bottom level, where roughly little future proofing goes a long way: by accommodating 70 College students have been hired to fill the automated books both electronic and paper, Chicago’s library of the storage system this summer. For eight hours a day, they load future is likely to retain that title for a long time. ♦

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 41

In the digitization lab, Sara Liss, AB’11, uses the Zeutschel face-up scanner to capture a bound manuscript.

Head of conservation Ann Lindsey talks with a visitor about treating a century-old map of Chicago Heights.

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Bright passage by mar ianna ta x choldin

A sunlit walkway connects the Regenstein to the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library.

am standing in the cheese department of a shiny new of books and archival boxes deep in the earth, cleverly supermarket in Champaign, Illinois, weeping and stored and retrieved by sci-fi-like machines. On the main remembering. It’s late October 1991, and I returned floor, a short walk from Regenstein Library by means of yesterday from Moscow, which appears to be going a wide and bright passage—past the Special Collections under. Glasnost and perestroika, those reforms from Research Center, where faculty, students, and visiting the top, produce wondrous, heady sensations in my scholars can work in light and pleasant surroundings—are friends—librarians, journalists, and other intellec- a state-of-the-art preservation lab, a digital imaging room, tuals—but Soviet life as they knew it is grinding to a and a comfortable and attractive reading room, already halt, and they are suffering. In a cold, wet October, populated by students. And above it all, a magnificent, airy the windows in my crumbling hotel room didn’t shut glass dome, drawing in the light, symbolizing openness, the and were rimmed with frost. There was no food for joy of learning, of creating new knowledge, of access for breakfast, and prostitutes roamed the lobby and halls. Worse all, and of free expression. by far, one of my friends can’t find milk for her baby in any For me, the Mansueto is the cheese department in the Istore, no matter how enterprising she, her mother, and her Champaign supermarket: it has everything anyone could mother-in-law are about finding lines to stand in. And librar- want. It is the latest addition to a great academic library, the ies, so important in Soviet times, are suffocating from lack newest jewel in its crown. And I’m not weeping for Russia of funds and opportunities to grow and change. Like every- anymore, although it gives me plenty of nervous moments. thing else in Russia, they have nothing. Libraries don’t even Twenty years have passed, and the world has changed. have rubles to meet their payrolls. Many Russian libraries have books again, and technology, Now I’m back in Champaign, jet-lagged and miserable thanks to enterprising directors, to government at vari- from a cold, my head and my heart still with my friends in ous levels that recognizes the value of libraries, and to the Moscow. And here is this incredible cheese department, gradual development of civil society. with dozens—maybe hundreds—of brands and types and The world is still a troubled place, as it no doubt always sizes and shapes, sliced and unsliced, flavored and plain, will be, but we mustn’t let that keep us from rejoicing in a hard and soft, gathered from all over the world. Beyond magnificent new library and improved access to informa- the cheese department are the fresh fruits and vegetables, tion and knowledge for scholars everywhere. ♦ and beyond that meats of every kind, breads, and cereals. I’m overcome with sadness and guilt. Marianna Tax Choldin, U-High’59, AB’62, AM’67, So what has this moment got to do with the new Man - PhD’79, who received a 2011 Alumni Association sueto Library? In my mind, quite a bit. As a member of the Public Service Award, is the Mortenson distinguished visiting committee for the library, I’ve followed the Man- professor emerita at the University of Illinois at sueto from its beginning, when it was just plans on paper. Urbana–Champaign. Her work to improve library photos by nathan kirkman Now it stands, complete and open to the public. Millions services earned her Russia’s Pushkin Gold Medal.

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 45

profile S IEN E

FIFor 41 years Stanton Friedman, TION SB’55, SM’56, has traveled the world with a simple message: UFOs are real. by lydialyle gibson photo darren leow darren photo

In 2007 the Mutual UFO Network, an organization that investigates UFO phenomena, gave Friedman its highest award for ufology.

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he kid knew his teacher was wrong. And But the cornerstone of Friedman’s career is something looking back, there was never really a much simpler: a series of slides and a stack of lecture notes. chance that he would let it go. It was the He spends months every year traveling to classrooms, con- middle of the school year, 1943, and Mrs. ference halls, and auditoriums around the world, giving a Rose Gutkin was giving her fifth graders lecture called “Flying Saucers ARE Real.” The evidence is in Linden, New Jersey, an astronomy les- overwhelming, he says, that the planet is being visited by ex- son: the sun, she explained, remains mo- traterrestrials, and that the US government is covering it up. tionless, and all the planets orbit around And he’ll debate anyone, anywhere, who argues otherwise. it. But Stanton Friedman had just read in his encyclopedia that the whole so- his past July, Friedman turned 77. He figured he’d be lar system, including the sun, orbits the retired by now. But seeing his eyes widen when he center of the galaxy. “At 12 miles a second,” he says. “That imagines alien sojourners propelling themselves to impressed the heck out of me. I mean, that’s fast.” TEarth in nuclear rockets (“Fusion! Every astronomer TSo Friedman raised his hand, corrected his teacher, and in the world knows that’s what powers the stars, but they got a dressing-down. The next day he brought the ency- never give a thought to using it for a propulsion system”), clopedia to school. “And she reluctantly agreed that, well, or hearing story after story tumble out of him—the day he maybe that’s the way it was.” found out about Roswell and went searching for the only wit- Almost seven decades later, Friedman, SB’55, SM’56, ness whose name he knew, the first time he looked up from still tells this story—in vivid, exuberant detail—to give a podium and saw 400 people looking back—it’s hard to be- people a sense of who he is: a methodical researcher, a lieve that he could ever retire. steadfast debater, an investigator, a scholar. A scientist. Friedman lives in Fredericton, Canada, a university He’s gotten used to proving his qualifications, convinc- town straddling the St. John River, 60 miles north of ing people that he’s serious and, occasionally, that he’s sane. Maine. His living room is bright and floral, its walls and Since 1970 Friedman, who half a lifetime ago worked as a tabletops adorned with family photographs and watercol - nuclear physicist with a government security clearance, has ors painted by his sister-in-law. Most are cheerful tableaus: been a full-time ufologist—that is, someone who studies un- Friedman and his second wife, Marilyn; his three children identified flying objects. In national archives and presiden- from his first marriage; his daughter from his second; his tial libraries, Friedman pores over declassified documents 24-year-old grandson; and his great-grandson, James. and scientific reports on UFO sightings and unexplained His basement study is a different scene altogether: a riot aerial events. At times his job is not unlike detective work: of strewn papers, sprung-open filing cabinets, and groan- tracking down witnesses and collecting their testimony, ing bookshelves. Against one wall, rolls of paper held to- chasing leads that turn up in his reading or that come to him, gether by rubber bands are stacked up like ancient scrolls. as they sometimes do, from someone confiding a name or a Friedman’s desk and computer occupy a small, semicleared place or a piece of evidence. Friedman claims to be the “first oasis by the door. “See,” he says, surveying the chaos, civilian investigator” at Roswell, New Mexico, where many “what I really needed was a secretary.” people believe that in July 1947 a spaceship crashed in the Friedman and Marilyn, a New Brunswick native, moved desert. Indeed, it was largely Friedman’s digging, starting to Fredericton 30 years ago, and since then he’s become a lo- in the late 1970s, that brought widespread attention to Ros- cal celebrity. Mayor Brad Woodside, who declared August well, an incident that had been all but forgotten. 27, 2007, Stanton Friedman Day, wishes his famous citizen His books have titles like Flying Saucers and Science: A would mention Fredericton more often on television. “He’s Scientist Investigates the Mysteries of UFOs and Crash at Co- a scientist, and a good one,” says Rod Cooper, a computer- rona: The US Military Retrieval and Cover-Up of a UFO. His science professor at the University of New Brunswick. television appearances are myriad—Unsolved Mysteries, As a college student decades ago, Cooper saw a UFO as History Channel documentaries, network interviews on he crossed a toll bridge on his way to his parents’ home in Nightline and CBS Sunday Morning. Friedman was a guest Niagra Falls. Five bright objects appeared in the distance, on three Larry King Live shows dedicated to UFOs, where flying in a V. At first he thought they were Piper Cubs, but

he sat shoulder to shoulder with disbelievers and witnesses, in an instant they were right overhead. “Amazingly close,” wearing his usual dark suit and red pocket square, his wild he says, and amazingly fast. Then just as suddenly they wiry eyebrows flashing above excitable green eyes. “Physi- were gone. At the tollbooth people were standing beside

cal trace cases, radar variable sightings—evidence!” he their cars, looking up. “I think it’s very important,” Cooper boomed during a 2007 show, squalling with UFO skeptic says, “to have people like Stan who take a very objective, Michael Shermer. “You don’t talk about evidence!” scientific research view of this thing.”

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Friedman was living in Pittsburgh when his UFO interest became a calling.

“Respected by all, ridiculed by some, loved by others,” is how Roderick Nolan, Friedman’s friend and sometime respected by All, boss, sums up his hometown reputation. A founding execu- tive at a Fredericton engineering and consulting firm where ridiculed by some, Friedman freelanced a few projects, Nolan remembers the time a few of the company’s technicians climbed onto the loved by others. roof to dangle a fake flying saucer outside Friedman’s of- fice window. “He came in one morning and it was hanging there,” laughs Nolan. “All in good fun.”

n impulse buy set the trajectory for Friedman’s life’s work. He needed one more volume to round out an order from a discount bookseller in New York so he Awouldn’t have to pay the postage. It was 1958, and Friedman, two years out of grad school at the U of C, was married and living in Cincinnati, working at General Elec- tric on aircraft nuclear propulsion systems. The title that caught his eye was a hardcover marked down to $1 called The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, by Air Force captain Edward J. Ruppelt. The first chapter opened with a jolt: “In the summer of 1952, a United States Air Force F-86 jet interceptor shot at a flying saucer. This fact, like so many others that make up the full flying saucer

photo courtesy stanton friedman stanton courtesy photo story, has never before been told.” In the early 1950s, Rup-

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 49

Among Friedman’s Roswell memorabilia is a photocopy of the Los Angeles Herald-Express from July 8, 1947.

pelt—who coined the term “unidentified flying object”— Ralph Nader of UFOs,” he once told a newspaper reporter, headed Project Blue Book, a group of high-ranking military “not the Billy Graham.” officers convened to analyze UFO sightings and determine The report, which omitted classified information, was if the mysterious things in the sky posed a threat to national released to the public in 1955, and it came with a summary security. By the time Project Blue Book folded in 1969, it that quoted the Secretary of the Air Force: “On the basis had evaluated 12,618 reports of sightings. of this study, we believe that no objects such as those popu- Friedman found Ruppelt’s book intriguing, if not entirely larly described as flying saucers have overflown the United convincing. But he was curious enough to keep UFOs on his States.” But Friedman knew that assertion plainly contra- reading list. In 1959 a job with Aerojet-General Nucleonics dicted the numbers in the report. “Now, I was working brought him to Northern California, where a local librarian under security, and sometimes you’ve got to tiptoe around fed him book after book on flying saucers. “I must have read the truth a little bit,” he says, “because you can’t release 15,” he says. By that time he was more than intrigued. classified information. But I’d never run across a situation Then he made what he calls one of the “big discoveries” of where someone in authority in a very widely distributed his life: Project Blue Book Special Report Number 14, a vast sta- press release was lying through his teeth.” tistical analysis of 3,201 UFO cases, with hundreds of graphs, Not only was he now certain that aliens had visited Earth, tables, charts, and maps. “I was in data heaven,” Friedman Friedman also was convinced that the US government was says. According to the report, about 22 percent of sightings hiding what it knew. “I was shook up,” he says. He joined na- were declared “unknown.” That means their origin couldn’t tional UFO organizations and began corresponding with au- be determined even after all the evidence was in—these were thors who’d written about flying saucers. His family moved objects that didn’t look like airplanes or balloons or any other from California to Indianapolis, and then in 1966 to Pitts- discernible vessel. They maneuvered in strange ways, hov- burgh, where Friedman worked on nuclear rockets at West- ering or changing speed and direction suddenly. Sometimes inghouse Astronuclear Laboratory. He read more UFO witnesses, many of them Air Force pilots, described seeing reports. “In every large-scale scientific study,” says Fried- actual saucer- or cigar-shaped objects. man, whose lectures cite five—including one by Northwest- Unknowns tended to be cases with better information: ern astronomer J. Allen Hynek, SB’31, PhD’35—“20 to 25 35 percent of “excellent” sightings—those with more re- percent of the cases can’t be explained. That’s a lot.” liable witnesses and, sometimes, corresponding physical evidence—defied explanation; only 19 percent of poor ones n Pittsburgh Friedman’s fascination became a calling. did. And the longer a sighting lasted, Friedman says, the He and a few others founded a UFO group and set up more likely it was to remain unexplained: 36 percent of a 24-hour hotline people could call to report a sighting. unknowns were seen for more than five minutes. InProject I“We hoped to get a team there while it was still hap - Blue Book Special Report Number 14, Friedman found facts, pening,” Friedman says. They never quite did. “Got there numbers, evidence to hang his conclusions on. “I’m the within ten minutes once. Just after it was over.”

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By 1969, when Westinghouse laid Friedman off and, he says, “the bottom began falling out of the advanced nuclear and space systems business,” the UFO business was boom- ing. His side schedule bustled with lectures and radio ap - pearances. A crowd of 500 nuclear society members came to hear him speak at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. When he addressed a joint meeting of Pitts- burgh’s aeronautics and electrical engineering institutes, people stayed so late, “the janitor had to kick us out.” More than 700 lectures and untold miles later, he’s still on the road. In the beginning he went wherever his cold calls could open a door to a lecture hall or a classroom, no matter how obscure the college or how small the town. He’s spoken at Cornell and Harvard, but also at Cayuga Commu- nity College in Auburn, New York, and Midland Lutheran Friedman in his study in 1977—a tidier place back then. College in Fremont, Nebraska. These days Friedman trav- els to conventions and talks around the globe: Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Korea, Italy, Australia, Finland, China.

In fact, one of the world’s foremost experts on flying sau- hat first drew him to UFOs were the stories: mys - cers has never seen one, although for a moment a few years terious objects appearing on air traffic controllers’ ago he thought perhaps he had. Friedman was filming a TV radar screens in places where the sky was empty of spot on an unlit New Hampshire road where, in 1961, a couple Wairplanes, World War II bombers seeing strange named Betty and Barney Hill claimed to have been abducted metallic spheres and colored balls of light, Air Force pilots by a UFO while driving home from Quebec. (Friedman co- engaging with phantasms they could sometimes photograph authored Captured!, a book on the abduction, with the Hills’ but never catch. “I have had people quietly tell me,” Fried- niece, Kathleen Marden.) As the film rolled, the cameraman man says, “about cases in which a pilot went up to chase looked up and said, “What’s that?” Friedman turned to see a UFOs,” with orders to shoot them down. On at least seven mysterious light rise and then darken in the gloomy distance. occasions, he says, pilots went up but never came back. And then another, and then another. But a little sleuthing re- The stories are endless. In 1950 a couple in McMinnville, vealed a terrestrial source. “We think it was battlefield flares Oregon, took two famous pictures that seemed to show— dropped by the Vermont National Guard,” Friedman says, with arresting clarity—a flying saucer floating above the shrugging. “That’s the closest I’ve come.” barns and brambles of their farm. The Canadian navy went In 1968 Friedman did his first radio show and gave his first searching in 1967 for a UFO that a dozen people saw crash UFO lecture at a book-club meeting in a Westinghouse col- into the water near Shag Harbor, a Nova Scotia fishing league’s living room. “I came up with some slides and every- village. Friedman wrote about Ronnie Johnson, a Kansas thing.” He got on the roster of a lecture series at Carnegie teenager who, in 1971, happened upon a brightly lit mush- Mellon University, and afterward the Engineering Society room-shaped object hovering two feet above the ground of Detroit booked him for a dinner lecture. The event sold on his father’s farm. Johnson and his dog were temporarily out three weeks in advance, all 1,008 seats. paralyzed, and as the UFO sped away, it left behind a glow- ing ring of dirt, which afterward could not absorb water. Soil samples revealed “too high a level of soluble mineral,” Fried- man says. “I call it salty, because that’s what it boils down to.” Even years later, nothing would grow on that spot. I’m the Ralph As compelling as the first-person accounts were, what spoke to Friedman most clearly was the data. He’s always had a numerical mind, a gift he believes he inherited from his NadeR of Ufos, grandfather, a fruit and vegetable peddler and Eastern Euro- pean immigrant who arrived in America with no money or Not the BIlly education, but with a formidable internal arithmetic. He was one of those guys, Friedman says, who could write down a photos courtesy stanton friedman stanton courtesy photos GRaham. string of prices on a paper bag and add them in his head. “No

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 51

In 1968 Friedman spoke to NASA employees in Downey, California, where the Apollo command modules were built.

about the other people.” Then he starts counting: 1, 2, 3, …, , 10, 15, 20, … By the time he’s finished, he says, usually ten PeOPle say ‘Why percent of the audience have their hands raised. In a crowd of 50 0 —not unusual for Friedman—that’s 50 people. “But then WOuld aliens cOme I ask, ‘How many of you reported what you saw?’” Nearly every hand drops. “I’ve discovered,” he says, “that there is here?’ i say, ‘i think this huge body of sightings that you won’t run into unless you directly ask, in circumstances where it’s OK for people they’re here tO to admit it.” In 40 years, Friedman says, he’s had only 11 hecklers— “and two of them were drunk.” Before he began lecturing quarantine us.’ professionally, he organized UFO-themed brown-bag lunches with nuclear physics colleagues. People were more interested than incredulous. “I’m not a masochist,” he often cash register.” Two generations later, Friedman pulled so far says. “I wouldn’t do this if people gave me a hard time.” ahead of the other third graders in math that, by the middle of the school year, his teachers moved him to fourth grade. ver a lunch of chardonnay and seafood chowder at a Analyzing UFO data, Friedman drew on his nuclear phys- restaurant overlooking the St. John River, Friedman ics expertise. He looked for clues to extraterrestrial propul- and his friend Roderick Nolan start in on a conversa- sion systems in the fission-powered aircraft carriers and an Otion about ancestors from the old country, which leads electromagnetic submarine built in the 1960s by a Westing- to the Irish potato famine and the Holocaust, which leads to house colleague. “It is possible to envision an airborne ana- the definition of God and the brutality of the human race. log” of that submarine, Friedman writes in an article posted “Regardless of where we live in this little speck of dust in on his website, “in which seawater is replaced by ionized elec- the cosmos, we are capable of terrible things,”Nolan muses. trically conducting air, and conventional electromagnetic Which sends Friedman, as so many topics inexorably do, fields are produced by superconducting magnets which need back to UFOs. “We’re a primitive society whose major activ- little space, very little power and weight, and generate very ity is tribal warfare,” he says, echoing a line from his lecture. high magnetic fields. ... The resulting system would be sym- “People say, ‘Why would aliens come here?’ I say, ‘I think metric, highly maneuverable, relatively silent, often have a they’re here to quarantine us.’” Now he’s off and running: glow around it, and be capable of sudden starts and stops.” “At the end of World War II, there were three signs that soon The other lure of UFOs was, simply, wonder. He remem- these Earthling idiots would be moving out into the galaxy: bers looking up at the New Hampshire sky his first night at V-2 rockets, atomic bombs, and radar. … And isn’t it amaz- Young Judea camp and thinking, “‘Where did all those stars ing, the only place in the world where you could check on all come from?’ You sure didn’t see them in Linden, New Jer- three of those technologies is southeastern New Mexico. sey.” And that’s exactly the point, he says: “Just because you That’s what Roswell was.” can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there, which is an important Probably more than any other single UFO event, the lesson to learn as a researcher.” Those same stars had hung Roswell incident has dominated Friedman’s professional over his roof every night back home in New Jersey, but he’d life. He heard about it in 1978, 31 years after a rancher report- never laid eyes on them. “Who ever saw the Milky Way? ed finding what he described as tinfoil, paper, pieces of rub- Well, in New Hampshire, you could see the Milky Way.” ber, and kite-sized sticks. He went to the sheriff, who went

to the authorities at the Roswell Army air field, who, after photo courtesy stanton friedman ost people believe in aliens. They may not tell their first issuing a press release saying that remains of a “flying friends and neighbors, but they tell pollsters. In disc” had been recovered, revised their conclusion. What 1997 a CNN poll found that 80 percent of Ameri- the rancher, Mack Brazel, had found, they explained, was mcans think the government is hiding information debris from a high-altitude weather balloon. Newspapers about UFOs, and 64 percent believe that extraterrestrials across the country picked up the story, but it faded quickly. have contacted humans. In a 2007 Associated Press poll, 14 Friedman was in Baton Rouge for a lecture at Louisiana percent said they’d seen a UFO. These numbers do not sur- State University when he first heard the details. A TV sta- prise Friedman. At the end of his lectures, he often asks the tion manager told him about a buddy from his ham radio audience how many of them have seen a flying saucer. “And days named Jesse Marcel, who lived in nearby Houma. In the hands go up,” he says, “each one thinking he’s the only 1947 Marcel had been the first Army intelligence officer on one. They know I’m not going to laugh, but they’re not sure the scene in Roswell. He’d hiked out to where the debris

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Early on, Friedman lectured wherever his cold calls opened a door. “I did a lot of student lounges,” he says.

landed and accompanied it to Wright-Patterson Air Force pointed in academic astronomers, who “think they know all base. Friedman called Marcel and asked him to share what there is to know” about interstellar travel, and in reporters he remembered from those first few days. After that, the who, year after year, fail to examine the “cosmic Watergate” whole story of Roswell started to crack open. of the government’s UFO cover-up. Friedman calls the SETI Over the next decade, Friedman and fellow ufologist Bill Institute, which listens for radio signals from outer space, the Norris sought out witness after witness, leapfrogging from “silly effort to investigate,” because, he says, aliens wouldn’t one account to another until they had testimony from 62 peo- contact us with antique radio technology. He’s still vexed ple, including the rancher’s son and neighbors —by then Bra- with physics classmate Carl Sagan, AB’54, SB’55, SM’56, zel was long dead—officers from the air base, and the Army PhD’60, for refusing to give credence to UFOs. Friedman public information officer who wrote the first press release liked Sagan; the two corresponded, and Friedman visited about a “flying disc.” Friedman found Glenn Dennis, the him a few years before he died. But Sagan’s attitude bothers town mortician, who claimed he got a call from the air field, him to this day. “The reliable cases are uninteresting,” Sagan asking about child-sized caskets. “For the aliens,” Friedman wrote of UFO sightings, “and the interesting cases are unre- explains, whose diminutive bodies would have been thrown liable.” Says Friedman, “That’s just totally false.” from the wreckage. He recalls visiting Dennis in Lincoln, One spat with skeptic Phil Klass involved a bet over the New Mexico, interviewing him amid the celebrations of a typography of Truman-era classified memos. It ended with Billy the Kid pageant. “I have a tape of him telling me his Friedman publishing in his first book a photocopy of the story, and the mariachi band going in the background.” $1,000 check Klass wrote after losing. Later, when Fried- Other ufologists followed Friedman’s rediscovery of Ros- man moved to Canada, Klass wrote to the National Research well, publishing their own books, uncovering other informa- Council in Ottawa to warn them of his arrival and of the “half- tion. The incident took root in the popular imagination. In truths and falsehoods” in his work. “Like wrestling with an 1992 the Roswell UFO museum opened, followed four years octopus,” Klass wrote, “when you manage to pin down one later by the annual Roswell UFO Festival. leg, the other seven are still thrashing about.” The “debunkers,” as Friedman calls them, growling out riedman’s audiences may not give him a hard time, but a each syllable with disdain, have never shaken him with a ufologist’s career isn’t without its skirmishes, and over question he couldn’t rebut using the facts and figures in his the decades he has taken on his fair share. He wears head or the avalanche of documents in his study. Among Fhis triumphs like badges: the Oxford Union debate the debris is a black-and-white photo taken a couple of years where he won 60 percent of the vote, the physics professors after he went on the road full time. A 36-year-old Friedman he silenced when they tried to sandbag him in front of their stands on a riser behind a tabletop lectern, a microphone at students. Friedman sells DVDs of his two-hour “formal de- his chin and a projector screen to his left. The hand-drawn bate” against astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James sign at his feet reads: “Flying Saucers ARE Real, Stanton McGaha, and he can recount word-for-word the arguments Friedman, April 29, 1971, 6:45, Student Lounge.” His suit he’s had with listeners of call-in shows. hangs baggy at the knees, and a tie clip holds a striped neck- His list of antagonists is long. On it are UFO skeptics and tie to his shirt. As he gazes down at his notes, you can see, UFO frauds, some of whom he has unmasked. He’s disap- behind his beard, the hint of a smile. He looks as if he is just about to speak. “Facts in hand before mouth in gear.” That’s Friedman’s ethos. Of all of the catchphrases he’s invented over the years—and there are many —it’s the one he tries hardest to he’s still vexed live by. In 2001, decades after challenging his fifth-grade teacher on the motion of the solar system, Friedman re- with classmate turned to Linden for his 50th high school reunion. An old friend mentioned that Mrs. Gutkin still came to synagogue. carl sagan For his Friedman’s eyes widened. Here was a chance to see her again, to tell her the story that for years he’d been telling ev- eryone else, about how his life was changed that day, how he reFusal to give learned the value of facts in hand—how, all those years ago, he’d been right. “So I went to the temple for old time’s sake,” credence to uFo he says. He found Mrs. Gutkin, by then in her 80s, and he told her the whole story. She didn’t remember him, but that photo courtesy stanton friedman stanton courtesy photo sightings. didn’t matter. “I needed to tell her,” he says, “that she had inspired me to go for the facts. Always to go for the facts.” ◆

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 55

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’71 phd , fourcher

lou

by

kelly

jason

Alzheimer’s has erased the stories behind Lou Fourcher’s images, LouFourcher’s behind stories the haserased Alzheimer’s but his photographs Side of a neighborhood demolished have West stirred memories in former residents. photography by photography LOST&FOUND

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- - - ◆

To seeTo all of Lou Fourcher’s photos from the magazine.uchicago.edu/fourcher. visit Valley, The photos have gotten the neighbors old reminisc Those what-were-we-thinking embarrassments embarrassments what-were-we-thinking Those ing about people and places—the market offering five loaves of bread for a dollar, the dank interior of Ms. Mary Sweet Shop, the working men who tinkered with their cars to race on inter the and truth weekends. unflinching in “My father interested always was His says. Fourcher Mike people,” of soul the in ested psychologist’s mind and photographer’s eye revealed the soul in the Valley. ger exists,” Mike Fourcher says,where “and people a neighborhood really didn’t havepictures.”of the means to take a lot employeeinred, white, and bluestriped pants and an American flag hat. Or,Fourcher notes, “theyoung woman who is clearly trying to be all sexy, but her outfit just makes her look like Santa Claus. What’s that all about?” scream 1970s, but a poignant thread runsphotos. throughFrom babies to grandparents, the Lou Fourcher documented ordinary livesbeen lost that to history. “It’s a neighborhood otherwise that no lon could have Lou Fourcher’s self-portrait in 1981,Valley. the photographed he a decade after

- - - - - clown , turned, techto leaning against a Mickie Williams , and, Jerry McDonald Roscoe View Journal View Roscoe Chuckie , and Fat Jaw Scanning 300 slides that filled three carousels in Former Valley resident Bill Roddy, whose memoir There are photos of the adults playing pool on a Amid the blight, bright life shines. Groups of kids Other details are hard to miss, like the YMCA Whatmemories!!!” nology to help satisfy his curiosity about the photos. accumulated has he later, a basement closet, views he created page a public 6,000 Flickr stream. Almost colorful nuggets in the form of online comments, and he’s tapped into nostalgia expressed in emoticons and exclamation points: “omg look at my uncle bunky :)” “ 2010) Press, Pond Manhood from the Hood (Beaver’s recognizedchildhood there, experiences his recounts buddies Square Journal Square ing for the camera in a few shots. In another, Roddy identified his friend graffiti-sprayed wall. theRoddy Y,” “We writes were under hisyoung Flickr handle ‘poolM_Sin sharks’ atcerely. “We both use to ‘run’ the tables after school. The older youth and adults hated us because we were verygood shootingat poolvery a at young age.” Luther Martin of sketches beneath table duct-taped King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and Sidney Poitier. Others show men hanging out on stoops and street corners or kids playing baseball, riding bikes,ing at swing a playground. Shops, bars, churches—the Sun Lounge, therise Washburne Grocery, the Timmons Holy Temple—all have scissor gates protectingwindows and doors. Boarded-up buildings their and brick walls spray painted with truepock love the and landscape. gang messages Behind loomsabovesign a a that fence, reads, “Beware Bad-Dog.”of a menacing snout play on porches, in vacant lots, in alleys. High-school- age girls preen for the camera. Another group of girls waits for a bus at a Roosevelt Road stop, resplendent in bright red, yellow, and blue coats. A commenter on Fourcher’s Flickr stream speculatesattended Simpson High School, where that pregnant girls they probably take look, they’re pregnant,” a if you sent. “And were says Fourcher, who hadn’t noticed that before. ------hD’71, came to Chicago P , from a Massachusetts fishing village, village, fishing Massachusetts a from by way of Maine’s Bowdoin College, to study psychology. He wanted to see inside people, to understand the forces that shaped them. His curios ity extended beyond his own cultural experience: as an undergraduatemid-1960s, in Fourcher thespent a semester at Atlanta’s historically black More house College. ou Fourcher ou In 1971 he took his interest in people and his Pentax That’s what Lou Fourcher went looking for with Now suffering from Alzheimer’s and living in a Rog ers Park facility, the 68-year-old Fourcher no longer longer no Fourcher 68-year-old the facility, Park ers remembers many details about the people from theley—and Val even when he did, he didn’t talk much about them. He still has some images framed on his wall and recognizes them as his work, but the diseasehimtheof details. Last winter hasMike Fourcher,the robbed pub lishertwoof online North Side publications, the Center 35 mm camera into Chicago’s Near West Side neigh Side West Near Chicago’s into camera mm 35 borhood known as the Valley. Now the area encom passes the Illinois Medical District, the site of new theCook County Hospital, Rush University Medi cal Center, and the University of Illinois at Chicago health-sciencescampus. Before vi the a medical was develop Valley the residents, many displaced ment neon, Flamboyant neighborhood. troubled, if brant, polyester fashions, and static-electric Afros Fourcher’sdate images of the show vanished they “Because community, tense. yet present the like feel they soul,” says his son Mike Fourcher. his camera. gang a While befriended he clinic, working health a included forwhich UIC’s Valley Project, memberwhoseprotection himgaveaccess parts to of otherwisehave he not mightneighborhoodwhere the been welcome. “My dad described this guy walking around showing his gun to people,” Mike Fourcher moments intimate and candid also captured He says. in private homes. “I don’t know how my father man agedtopartbe a theseof people’s lives.” L

58 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 59

ghborhood ghborhood ctures. I sts, and a ghborhood where I I dn’t the have people really people really means to a take lot of p It’s aI ne no longer that ex ne dI

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Achieve a higher degree of excellence.

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Open House and Lecture IS THERE TROUBLE WITH FREUD? Bertram Cohler William Rainey Harper Professor, Social Sciences Collegiate Division, and professor in the Departments of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago

Saturday, October 29 10 am to 1:15 pm Downtown Gleacher Center 450 N. Cityfront Plaza Drive, Chicago

Learn more grahamschool.uchicago.edu/mla/aa [email protected] 773.834.0159

Notes and Releases, 67 ...... Alumni News, 69 ...... Advanced Degrees, 88 ...... Deaths, 92 ...... Classifieds, 95 peer review

Doc Films staff manage the film projector. If you can date the photo, contact [email protected]. (For some thoughts from a current Doc projectionist, see page 25.) photo from archival photographic files, apf4-01319, special collections research center, university of chicago library

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 65

patiently explains what our (by alumni ESSaY then former) pediatrician saw. He doubts it is cerebral palsy, although that’s possible. Sometimes, he says, malnutrition in pregnancy can cause weakness in the legs and make them seem stiff. Often it goes away. Sometimes it doesn’t. “But,” he adds, smoothing the crumpled edges of the Picture the possibilities photocopy, “you don’t really care, by MARGARET OLIN, A b’68, AM’77, Phd’82 do you?” As he returns the photo, he adds: “She looks alert.” On the long drive home, I ask myself when Rob and I became the he’s about to scream; near our home, proves a great parents of a photograph. The moment that’s the only expla- resource. Within days I have more came, I think, before the photograph nation.” Mom’s trying recommendations for pediatricians in did, during a telephone call from an to analyze a photograph, Hyderabad, India, than in Chicago. adoption agency. A baby girl named or rather a photocopy of Some months pass, and in the winter Sheba was available in Hyderabad. one. In it, a baby lies in a I finally convince the orphanage “Shall we send you her picture?” crib, arms outstretched. to take Sheba to one of them. A The photocopy that arrived soon The sallow colors of ten-page report arrives, certifying afterward has served ever since as the reproduction drain the healthy development of a small a material token to stand in for the the cheerfulness out orphan in every possible respect. absence of a girl whose mother I have of her pink dress and The only problem is that the name been ever since I first heard her name. blue flowered mattress. Mom is of the healthy orphan is Rebecca. It is a placeholder to introduce to the Scontradicting our pediatrician. He Soon Rebecca’s prospective relatives, to take to appointments, to said, “She has cerebral palsy. Many adoptive parents in Texas have more save a spot in our family until Sheba, of these children from Third World information than they need. There its namesake, arrives. countries have serious disabilities.” is, after all, nothing wrong with It is lucky that I know this now, A one-page medical report stapled Rebecca’s photograph. because although we sign our to the photocopy explains that five- What can a photograph tell us? I photocopy the next day, and soon month-old Sheba has had all her must expect a great deal, because in receive the original snapshot in the immunizations and a test, negative, my frustration I rummage through mail, the rest of the process will take for AIDS. These two pieces of paper piles of them: photographs of Ben at an entire box of staples and the help compose the first positive response that age, of myself, of our friends’ of many: senators, State Department to the many letters we sent earlier in children. But nothing compares. officials, and other adoptive parents the fall to adoption agencies. We can Once a child can sit up, no more including Rebecca’s, with whom sign across the picture and return pictures show him lying down. late-night phone calls will have made it to signal our acceptance, but our Pictures of American children in us long-distance friends. More than social worker tells us to show it first families are progress reports; they two years will pass before Rob, Ben, to the pediatrician who takes care demonstrate development: “Show and I sit in the office of an orphanage of our six-year-old son, Ben. “Adopt us how you can crawl, sweetie!” I in Hyderabad, facing a door through an American child,” the doctor pore over photographs of Sheba and which a long-awaited caregiver leads says, sending us away with offers to the other children in her orphanage. a three-and-a-half-year-old girl. “She connect us with right-to-life groups. Against the blue mattresses, you can doesn’t look much like her picture,” Instead of contacting any of count every limb, every finger: the our son comments. them, my husband, Rob, and I go pictures are inventories. That was 15 years ago. It did indeed home and stare at our photograph Spring comes. One day I set off take years before Sheba walked very for hours. Her legs and arms stick down Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, much. She preferred to skip and out like twigs on a snowman. Mom photocopy settled next to me in the twirl, run and dance. She could be continues: “They put her down to passenger’s seat, for an hour’s drive lethal with a soccer ball, as many of take the picture, and now she’s mad.” to a suburban hospital. There Sheba’s our family snapshots show. Soon she At first only my mother and sister photograph and I have a consultation will leave for college, and we will mull this over with us, but then the with a neonatologist, whom another treasure those photographs. ◆ rest of the extended family joins in, friend has found for us. Doctor and soon many others voice their Caplan, I am told, has an adopted Margaret Olin is a senior research theories. Most of us think Sheba child of his own from South America. scholar at Yale Divinity School

should see a doctor in India, and the We will have a second opinion. and the author of Touching University’s Department of South He examines the photograph Photographs (University of Chicago Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the list of inoculations. He Press, forthcoming).

66 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

photo courtesy thejeopardyfan.com founded by founded CeaseFire, organization Anticrime Fund honors honors Fund Defense Family the September In In defense of ch Notes on on appears Iyer “Barracuda” Monica May In Karter a contestant on a contestant as York,of New won $32,000 District Southern the for Court District US the of Ellis L. Ronald judge magistrate for by by 1960s the in started was (Kartemquin The Interrrupters documentary, Films Kartemquin of a 2011 subject the is GU home. a foster in abuse from protected be to right constitutional child’s foster a established that case first the filed attorney City York New the 1981 In system.” child-protection the in families and of children rights the advancing “achievements her for law, welfare child and family in expert an JD’73, Th members. gang among starting see they up fights break to and shootings retaliatory stop to attempt interrupters The city. the in violence prevent help to CeaseFire with work who members gang former interrupters,” “violence Chicago three follow Kotlowitz Alex and James Steve Filmmakers AB’57.) I n s Al s Gordon Quinn Jeopardy! , I , nT Umn , X’66; and and , X’66; err Monica Iyer A Won A Won UPT

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outreach. For more, see page 88. a of as public form events the to cover tweeters and of bloggers number aselect invited NASA launches, rocket and shuttle several last Center. the For Space the Kennedy from event the totweet live there was @bravelittlemuon), nominated nominated Obama Barack President July In In fall 2011 economist economist 2011 fall In cIT five-time a also is He Trivia: officer. enforcement chief bureau’s the as works currently Cordray regulations. banking overhauled that law of the part as 2010 in created Bureau, Protection Financial Consumer new the direct to general, attorney Ohio former 8, July launch shuttle space NASA’s For final TW Cities “are the modules of the of the modules the “are Cities gift. million $10 a with launched school the which Project, Systems Urban Stern’s leads also he growth, technology contributes to economic how in expert An of Business. YorkSchool Stern University’s New joined PhD’83, SB’77, Pro “Barracuda.” nickname the her gave Trebek Alex host title, champion a one-time her earning to y TecT A ee sys TI T ems n nd serve G T G Richard Cordray he Jeopardy!

flee the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 67 2011 sept–oct | magazine chicago of university the Paul Paul Romer Jeopardy! T winner. , JD’86, JD’86, ,

, Goldstein vehicles, and crime reports. crime and vehicles, towed locations, station fire permits, building salaries, employee as such data, listing online information government to access open promotes Goldstein role, the In department. technology information new office’s mayor’s the of as apart officer data chief Emanuel’s Rahm Mayor Analytics Group, in April April in Group, Analytics Predictive Department’s Police Chicago the of head as serving After dIGITA progress.”social of source important most our be will cities restructured and new change, environmental and technological to respond they As innovative. and experimental, diverse, be can they Internally, Internet. the airplane, the container, shipping the as interfaces standardized such via connect they “Externally, document. planning a in wrote Romer world,” modern Richard Ruiz l el l ITe , SM’05, became Chicago Chicago became SM’05, , , AB’10 (aka (aka AB’10 , Brett Brett

In a compilation of essays—most tHe Constitutional RigH ts oF releases presented at a 2008 University of CHildRen: in Re gault and Georgia conference—contributors Juvenile JustiCe examine how the academic By David S. Tanenhaus, AM’91, profession has evolved. Many of PhD’97; University Press the essays address the eroding of Kansas, 2011. The Magazine publishes a selection of position of tenured professors A 1967 Supreme Court case marked general-interest books, films, and albums at the undergraduate level. One one of the most important children’s- by alumni. For additional alumni contributor, for example, imagines rights cases of the 20th century, releases, see “In Their Own Words” at a new system emerging in which the granting children some of the same magazine .uchicago.edu/books. majority of academic appointments rights as adults. After 15-year-old are non-tenure-track, full-time hires. Gerald Gault was arrested by House signs and Collegiate Fun: Globe, Arizona, police for making sex, RaCe, and FaitH in a tRaFFiC stop an obscene phone call, he was College town By Janet Ruth Heller, PhD’87; sentenced to six years in juvenile By Chaise LaDousa, AB’92; Indiana Finishing Line Press, 2011. detention, much harsher than an adult University Press, 2011. Written over four decades, this poetry punishment for the same crime. The Anthropologist and linguist collection from Janet Ruth Heller— extreme sentence inspired the ACLU Chaise LaDousa studies how who won national awards for her to take the case to the Supreme Court. undergraduates in the college town 2006 children’s book How the Moon David Tanenhaus explores the case of Oxford, OH, imagine and reflect Regained Her Shape (Sylvan Dell)— and its legacy. on partying—which mostly consists draws from her experiences during of alcohol, sex, and drugs. He the anti-Vietnam War movement; as i Feel so good: tHe liFe and tiMes focuses specifically on more than an entertainer, writer, and artist; and oF Big Bill B RoonzY 200 off-campus house signs at Miami mourning her father’s death. By Bob Riesman, AM’88; University of University of Ohio, where LaDousa Chicago Press, 2011. was a visiting professor from 2000 to tHe invention oF MaRKet FReedoM Bob Reisman’s biography of the early 2003. The signs bear names such as By Eric MacGilvray, AM’95, PhD’99; 20th-century Chicago blues star “Boot ’N Rally” and “Hot Box” and Cambridge University Press, 2011. follows his personal life and career, have been a part of student life at the Examining the modern rise of with stories of his performances in university since the 1970s. market freedom, political scientist jazz clubs and concert halls. His life Eric MacGilvray argues that the is also recounted through interviews Keeping YouR CHild in Mind: notion of individuals’ unregulated with Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, oveRCoMing deFianCe, tantRuMs, economic behavior was invented, and Ray Davies, who discuss how and otHeR eveRYdaY BeHavioR displacing a classical tradition of Broonzy inspired their music. pRoBleMs BY seeing tHe woRld republican thought in which freedom tHRougH YouR CHild’s eYes meant collective political self- By Claudia M. Gold, AB’83, MD’87; Da determination, free from dependenc Capo Lifelong Books, 2011. on another’s will. He also explores Children’s behavioral problems, the ethics of freedom and how the says pediatrician Claudia Gold, language around it—“liberty” as are symptoms of disruptions in an absence of constraint—shapes relationships. From her 20 years and distorts our contemporary of working with children, she conception of politics. argues that the most effective method of managing excessive tHe spoRt oF Kings and t He Kings crying and explosive outbursts is oF CRiMe: HoRse RaCing, politiCs, by strengthening the emotional and oRganized CRiMe in new YoRK, relationships between parent and 1865–1913 child. Sharing stories from personal By Steven A. Riess, AM’69, PhD’74; experience, Gold shows parents Syracuse University Press, 2011. “how to be with a child,” validating Thoroughbred horse racing thrived his emotions so that he can eventually from the mid 19th century until the manage those emotions on his own. early 20th century, largely through its gambling connection. Steven tHe aMeRiCan aCadeMiC pRoFession: Riess chronicles the sport’s history— tRansFoRMation in Conte MpoRaRY during its early period, the New Yor HigHeR eduCation metropolitan area was the national Edited by Joseph C. Hermanowicz, capital—and the politics that allowe AB’90, AM’93, PhD’96; Johns Hopkins horse racing to continue despite University Press, 2011. illegal practices.

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Geographers, he helped run an organic- deaths gardening community for 34 years. He was predeceased by his first wife, Tess Loth Helburn, AB’38. He is survived by Faculty and StaFF five seasons of fieldwork there. In 1989 his wife, Suzanne; two sons; a stepdaugh- he came to Chicago as a professor of Near ter; and six grandchildren. Vijay S. Dayal, professor emeritus of Eastern languages and civilizations and Maurice M. Tennant, SB’40, an anesthe- surgery, died June 30 in Chicago. He was director of the Oriental Institute, where siologist, died June 17 in Olympia Fields, 74. An expert in hearing and balance dis- he headed its largest building expansion. IL. He was 92. An Army veteran, Tennant eases, Dayal taught at the University of Sumner retired in 1997. He is survived by worked at Oak Lawn’s Christ Hospital for Toronto before joining Chicago’s sur - his wife, Kathleen; a daughter; a son; two more than 30 years. His first wife, Helen gery department in 1986. As director of stepchildren; a sister; seven grandchil - (Isenberg) Tennant, AB’41, AM’42, died neuro-otology, he created a special rotat- dren; and five great-grandchildren. in 1984. He is survived by his wife, Ber - ing chair to diagnose balance issues and netta; a daughter; two sons; three step - patented an artificial voice box. Recipient 1930s children; seven grandchildren; and two of the University of Chicago Medical and step-grandchildren. Biological Sciences Alumni Association’s Milton Sills, PhB’31, JD’32, died May 31 George Cotsirilos, AB’41, LLB’42, a de- 2007 Gold Key Award, Dayal wrote and in Hayward, CA. He was 101. Sills began fense attorney, died March 27 in Chicago. illustrated the text Clinical Otolaryngology, his law practice in Illinois before moving He was 90. A WW II veteran, Cotsirilos first published in 1981. He is survived by to Hayward in 1950. There he launched worked in the Cook County state’s attor - his wife, Sheela; two daughters, including a practice with his brother, who died in ney’s office, founded two law firms, and Anjali Dayal, AB’88; son Amit Dayal, U- 1968. Sills ran the office until his early- taught at John Marshall Law School. A High’88; and two grandchildren. 1990s retirement. Survivors include a sis- regent with the American College of Trial Paul Meier, the Ralph and Mary Otis Ish- ter and three nieces. Lawyers, he was an inaugural member of am distinguished service professor emer- Miriam Bazelon Knox, X’36, died May the Illinois Supreme Court’s Registra- itus of statistics, pharmacological and 21 in Washington, DC. She was 96. The tion and Disciplinary Commission. He physiological sciences, medicine, and the first female president of the Jewish Social is survived by his wife, Joan; a daugh - College, died August 7 in New York City. Service Agency in the 1950s and ’60s, ter; two sons; four stepchildren; sister He was 87. A cofounder of the Kaplan- Knox later helped launch the Head Start Betty Angelos, PhB’46, SB’47; and eight Meier estimator, a statistical method that preschool program and was a Peace Corps grandchildren. estimates survival rates in clinical trial recruitment consultant. Knox was an hon- Harriet Field Augustus Swanson, A B’4 1 , data, Meier joined the Chicago faculty in orary trustee of Washington’s David L. died March 19 in Chicago. She was 91. 1957. In his 35 years at the University, he Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, After working for the Chicago Public Li - chaired the statistics department for more named for her first husband. She is survived brary, Swanson spent more than 20 years than a decade. After retiring as professor by her husband, Robert; two sons; a step- teaching in the Chicago Public Schools. emeritus in 1992, Meier joined Columbia daughter; a sister; four granddaughters; Survivors include her daughter, Abigail University as head of its biostatistics divi- and six great-grandchildren. Swanson, U-High’72; a son; and three sion. Named the 1986 Statistician of the Carl Marcus Olson, PhD’36, a chemist grandchildren. Year from the American Statistical As - and physicist, died May 16 in Solomons, Robert L. Meyer, AB’42, died March 24 in sociation’s Chicago chapter and recipient MD. He was 99. During WW II Olson Chicago. He was 90. A W W II and Korean of its 2004 Samuel Wilks Award for his worked on the Manhattan Project. Later, War veteran, Meyer was editorial direc- contributions, Meier also was a founding as a researcher at the DuPont Company, he tor of the National Safety Council. He is member of the Society for Clinical Trials. discovered how to produce hyperpure sili- survived by his wife, Catherine (Leinen) He is survived by his wife, Louise; three con in quantity, which led the company to Meyer, PhB’47; two daughters, including daughters, Diane E. Meier, U-High’69, develop semiconductor technology. Olson Cathy Luchins, MD’85; and two grand- Karen E. Meier, U-High’72, and Joan Su- directed DuPont’s Experimental Station children, including Kerith Luchins, U- san Meier, U-High’75, JD’83; and five pigment department for 18 years before High’00, and Matt Luchins, U-High’10. grandchildren. retiring in 1971. Survivors include a daugh- Morris B. Parloff, AM’42, a psychiatrist, James B. Nachman, a professor of pedi- ter, a son, and a granddaughter. died April 2 in Teaneck, NJ. He was 92. atrics, died from a suspected heart attack Lloyd G. Lewis, SB’39, PhD’46, a physi- After serving in WW II, Parloff spent on a rafting trip in the Grand Canyon June cist, died March 8 in Madison, WI. He was three decades with the National Institute 10. He was 62. A childhood-cancer spe - 93. Lewis taught physics at Princeton and of Mental Health, where he rose to branch cialist, he led studies that improved the was a research scientist at Standard Oil chief. In retirement he had a private prac- survival rates of young leukemia patients before joining Argonne National Labora- tice and taught at American University in and helped develop a treatment regimen tory as a senior physicist. Holder of eight Washington, DC. Recipient of the Public for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Nach- patents, he designed and built a digital Health Service Superior Service Award, man joined Chicago as an assistant profes- computer control for nuclear accelerators. Parloff was a past president of the Society sor in 1980 and became a professor in 1999. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; four for Psychotherapy Research. He is sur- Survivors include his father, Adolph R. children, including Perry Lewis, AB’75; vived by his wife, Gloria Harnick Parloff, Nachman, SB’32, MD’36; brother Robert four grandchildren; and a great-grandson. SB’43; two sons; and a grandson. Nachman, AM’73; and a sister. Jerome “Jerry” P. Scheidler , A B’43 , William Sumner, director emeritus of the 1940s MBA’47, died April 3 in Fishers, IN. He Oriental Institute, died July 7 in Colum- was 89. A WW II veteran, Scheidler bus, OH. He was 82. An expert on ancient Nicholas Helburn, AB’40, died June 11 in worked in marketing at Eli Lilly until Iran, Sumner served in the Navy and re - Boulder, CO. He was 92. Helburn launched his 1985 retirement. Survivors include a tired as lieutenant commander before join- the earth-sciences department at Montana daughter, four sons, 18 grandchildren, and ing Ohio State University. From 1972 to State College, directed the National Sci- two great-grandchildren. 1978, he directed the University of Penn - ence Foundation’s High School Geography Shirley DoBos Patterson, SB’43, died June sylvania’s excavations at the Tal-i Malyan Project, and chaired the University of Col- 9 in Bethesda, MD. She was 88. She was a site in western Iran, overseeing the pub- orado’s geography department. A former child-health and family-planning special- lication of a monograph series based on president of the Association of American ist for the US Public Health Service, a

92 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

central program officer for the American was 86. A psychiatric social worker who bridge Ancient History. His wife, Lore Revolution Bicentennial Commission, and worked with developmentally disbled (Weinberg) Ostwald, AM’47, died May a senior staff member with the US Agency and autistic children, Ostwald also was an 14, 2010 (see above—Ed.). He is survived for International Development. Patter- art-history scholar. Her husband, Martin by two sons, including David Ostwald, son later worked for the National Park Ostwald, AM’48, died April 10, 2010 (see AB’77, and three grandchildren. Service, writing its 1979 National Rec - below—Ed.). She is survived by two sons, Edward F. Wilt Jr., U-High’43 , Ph B’48, reation Plan. She is survived by her hus- including David Ostwald, AB’77, and SB’49, MD’53, an internist and gastroen- band, Bradley Patterson, A B’4 2 , A M ’43; three grandchildren. terologist, died June 21 in McHenry, IL. a daughter; three sons, Bruce Patterson, Maxine (Schwartz) Slomka, AB’47, died He was 85. A WW II veteran, Wilt taught AB’70, Glenn Patterson, AB’72, and Bri- April 18 in Half Moon Bay, CA. She was at the University of Illinois College of an Patterson, AB’83; ten grandchildren; 82. A past president of the Newcomers Medicine and practiced in McHenry his and five great-grandchildren. Club of San Mateo County, she also de - entire career. The inaugural president of James T. Pritchett , SB’44, an Emmy signed jewelry. She is survived by her hus- the McHenry County Board of Health, he Award–winning actor, died March 15 in band, Steven, and two daughters. also served as president of the McHenry New York City. He was 88. A WW II vet- Charles L. Stewart, JD’47, died May 17 County Medical Society and the Illinois eran, Pritchett practiced law before start- in Northbrook, IL. He was 91. Serving Association of Boards of Health. He is ing an acting career that led to 20 years in the Office of Strategic Services’s re - survived by his wife, Marie; a daugh - on the NBC soap opera The Doctors as Dr. search and analysis branch during WW ter; two sons; a brother; a sister; and five Matt Powers. He also appeared in Broad- II, Stewart later became a partner at law grandchildren. way productions of Sail Away and Two firm Mayer Brown. He then served as William L. Gordon, SM’49, died May 6 in for the Seesaw. He is survived by his wife, corporate secretary and general counsel North Haledon, NJ. He was 84. A WW II Cynthia; two daughters; a son; and three for Hartmarx Corporation. In retire - veteran, Gordon taught at Duke Univer- grandchildren. ment he volunteered as an arbitrator with sity before joining the National Security Marjorie (Penniman) Kaplan, A B’45 , the Circuit Court of Cook County. He is Agency as a cryptanalyst. As an engineer AM’54, died April 16 in Marshfield, WI. survived by his wife, Edalee; a daughter; at Honeywell during the 1960s, he de - She was 88. Kaplan taught elementary three sons; nine grandchildren; and six signed a small business computer. Gor - school and worked in economic devel - great-grandchildren. don later founded the Boston Computer opment at Ford Motor Company before Elizabeth (Ferwerda) Fox, PhB’48, of Group. He is survived by his wife, Gloria; teaching English composition at Pur - Chelsea, MI, died July 5. She was 87. After a daughter; a son; two grandsons; and a due University. Survivors include her her husband, Winslow Fox, SB’45 , M D’48, great-granddaughter. daughter, Katherine Kaplan, AB’76; finished his medical internship, the couple Albert L. Johnson, AM’49, died June 6 a son; five grandchildren; and two moved to Puerto Rico, where she befriend- in Southport, NC. He was 92. A WW II great-grandchildren. ed many of her neighbors. After moving veteran, Johnson was a professor and as- Ruth Janet (Oostmeyer) Servies, A B’45 , to Michigan, Fox became involved with sociate dean at the University of North died May 11 in Pensacola, FL. She was 85. Ann Arbor’s International Neighbors, Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Public A registered nurse, she worked at Sacred taking in visitors from around the world Health. He is survived by his companion, Heart Hospital. Survivors include a daugh- for weeks or months. She is survived by Margaret, and a daughter. ter, two sons, seven grandchildren, and her husband, four daughters, seven grand- three great-grandchildren. children, and two great-grandchildren. 1950s Carol Yeomans Farwell, PhB’46, died July Roscoe “Rusty” Hankin, MBA’48, died 15 in Ephraim, WI. She was 85. With her May 30 in Cranbury, NJ. He was 86. A Donald B. Baer, MBA’51, died March 26 husband, Robert L. Farwell, JD’49, she WW II veteran, Hankin worked for J. C. in Burr Ridge, IL. He was 81. Baer spent lived in Chicago; Door County, WI; and Penney Company. He is survived by his 40 years at Chicago’s Continental Bank, Santa Fe, NM , where she volunteered for wife, Marjorie; three daughters; and five where he was vice president. He is sur - several causes. In 1965 she marched with grandchildren. vived by his wife, Betty; two daughters; a Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, AL, to Wesley Keith Lind, SB’48, died May 13 son; and four grandchildren. fight racial segregation. She also played in St. Joseph, MI. He was 88. Lind spent Abraham Mort Casson, PhB’51, died June piano and sang. Survivors include her hus- nearly two decades as a chemist at Paint 6 in Richmond, VA. He was 82. Casson band, two daughters, two sons, and eight Research and McCrone Associates be - worked on substance-abuse treatment, in- grandchildren. fore teaching chemistry and physics at cluding a post as the Virginia state assistant Herbert C. Kriesel, X’47, died April 17 in Bloom Township High School. He retired mental health commissioner for substance Manassas, VA. He was 95. A WW II vet - in 1984 and became assistant treasurer for abuse. Survivors include a son and a sister. eran, Kriesel did economic research for the Chikaming Township. He is survived by John S. deBeers, PhD’51, an economist, US Department of Agriculture, the US his wife, Inga; three daughters, including died May 20, 2009, in Santa Rosa, CA. Agency for International Development, Diane Fenster, MD’78; a sister; and three He was 94. A conscientious objector and the Ford Foundation. He also was an grandchildren. during WW II, deBeers specialized in agricultural economist at Michigan State Martin Ostwald, AM’48, a professor Latin American development. After the University. In 1982 he started a second emeritus of classics, died April 10, 2010, in war, he worked for the Treasury Depart- career as an agent with Lutheran Brother- Swarthmore, PA. He was 88. A concentra- ment’s Latin American division until the hood Insurance. He is survived by his wife, tion camp survivor, Ostwald taught clas - McCarthy-era Treasury loyalty board cut LaVonne; three daughters; a son; four sics at Columbia University before joining his staff and denied him a top-secret clear- brothers; two sisters; eight grandchildren; Swarthmore College, where he stayed for ance after an investigaton. He resigned and eight great-grandchildren. more than 30 years. His 1989 book, From in 1955, joining the Government Devel- Richard Lieber, AB’47, died March 30 in Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of opment Bank of Puerto Rico. Five years Carmel, IN. He was 88. A WW II veter- Law: Law, Society, and Politics in Fifth- later deBeers joined the Inter-American an, Lieber directed the band at Hamilton Century Athens (University of California Development Bank, where he worked on Southeastern High School until his 1984 Press), won the 1990 Goodwin Award Latin American development projects un- retirement. Survivors include a daughter, of Merit from the American Philological til his 1979 retirement. Survivors include three sons, and two grandchildren. Association. A member of the American his wife, Jan; two daughters; three grand- Lore (Weinberg) Ostwald, AM’47, of Academy of Arts and Sciences, Ostwald children; two step-grandchildren; and one Swarthmore, PA, died May 14, 2010. She was longtime editor of the journal Cam- great-grandson.

the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 93

Kenneth K. Inada, AM’51, died March 26 manager in the aerospace industry, work- and two brothers, including James M. Ol- in Honolulu. He was 87. A W W II veteran, ing for several aircraft-manufacturing sen, U-High’69. Inada taught Buddhism at the University companies including McDonnell Douglas. of Hawaii for a decade before joining the He retired in 1987. Survivors include four 1970s University of Buffalo in 1969. An expert sons, three daughters, ten grandchildren, in East-West comparative philosophy, in and two great-grandchildren. David Michael Crnic, AB’70, MD’74, a 1990 he became the second American in 150 surgeon, died of pancreatic cancer Novem- years to receive the Cultural Award from 1960s ber 8, 2010, in Coto de Caza, CA. He was the Japanese Society for the Promotion of 61. Crnic ran a surgical practice at Hoag Buddhism. He is survived by his wife, Ma- Lois Adelman Solomon, AB’60, JD’61, Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach. sako, and son Ernest Inada, MBA’74. died April 25 in Wilmette, IL. She was He also was a pilot and musician. He is sur- Hugh J. Kennedy Jr., DB’53, died March 71. A lawyer, Solomon also worked with vived by his wife, Sharon; four daughters; 22 in Muskegon, MI. He was 84. A W W II the New Trier Democrats and was an a son; and three grandchildren. veteran, Kennedy was the longtime presi- election judge. Her husband, Arthur Solo- Richard “Rocky” Beach, MBA’73, died dent of Goodwill Industries of Muskegon mon, AB’52, JD’61, died in 2004. She is April 18 in New Buffalo, MI. He was 68. County. Earlier in his career, he served as a survived by a daughter; a son; sister Char- A Vietnam veteran, he founded communi- Unitarian minister in Alton, IL. Survivors lotte Adelman, AB’59, JD’62; and four cations company Beach Consulting. He is include two daughters, a brother, a sister, grandchildren. survived by his wife, Jill, and two sisters. and two grandsons. Shelley C. Stone Jr., PhD’60, a professor Terry D. Keegan, SM’78, died April 27 in Margaret Lyne Moser, AB’53, died March emeritus of counseling and development, New Orleans. He was 57. Owner and CEO 25 in Beeville, TX. She was 77. Recipient died March 8 in Asheville, NC. He was of Keegan Geophysical Company Inc., he of the 20 03 Bee County Citizen of the Year 82. A Korean War veteran, in 1960 he was a member of the American Geophysi- award, Moser wrote a two-volume history joined Purdue University, remaining un- cal Union, the Society of Exploratory of the county. She also was a trustee emer- til his 1994 retirement. Author of two text- Geophysicists, and the American Asso- ita of the Joe Barnhart Foundation. Moser books, Stone also was Purdue’s assistant ciation of Petrochemical Geologists. Sur- is survived by her husband, William; a dean of the graduate school and associate vivors include two daughters, a son, his daughter; three sons; a brother; a sister; six dean of the education school. Survivors father, two brothers, and four sisters. grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. include two sons, two daughters, and six Albert Huckins Meers, MBA’78, died of Charles J. Adams, PhD’55, died March 23 granddaughters. a heart attack March 12 while in Florida. in Mesa, AZ. He was 86. A WW II vet- George F. Bruder, JD’63, died June 8 in He was 63. Meers began his career with eran, Adams taught religion at Princeton Cos Cob, CT. He was 73. A public-utility the First National Bank of Chicago before and at McGill University, where he was lawyer, Bruder founded Bruder, Gentile & moving into real estate with LaSalle Part- director of the Institute of Islamic Studies Marcoux in 1976 after working as a staff ners. Since 1990 he had been a partner with for 21 years. He later joined Arizona State lawyer for the Federal Power Commis - Broadacre Management Company in Chi- University as a professor of Islamic stud - sion. A past president of the Federal En- cago. He is survived by his wife, Kristin; ies. Survivors include a brother. ergy Bar Association, he sat on the Edison two stepdaughters; and two brothers. Henry H. Finck, PhD’55, died March 31 in Electric Institute’s legal committee and Vilas, NC. He was 85. A WW II veteran, was counsel to the board of trustees at St. 1980s Finck taught anatomy at the University Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, of Pittsburgh’s medical school. He is sur- MD. He is survived by his wife, Jean; two Patricia Hawkins Jobe, AM’81, died of a vived by his wife, Paula; two daughters; a daughters; a sister; and two grandchildren. stroke June 23 in Chicago. She was 65. Jobe son; and six grandchildren. Simon K. Chen, MBA’64, a mechanical was a Renaissance historian and a real- Robert A. Heavilin, AB’55, died February engineer, died June 13 in Middleton, WI. estate agent. She served on the University 25 in Bloomfield, CT. He was 75. Heavilin He was 85. Former president of Beloit of Chicago Children’s Hospital Commit- taught middle school in Verona, NJ, for Power and Energy, Chen specialized in tee, the U of C Service League, and the more than 40 years and was a psychology diesel-engine development and helped es- Blue Gargoyle. She is survived by her hus- professor at Capital Community College tablish exhaust emission standards before band, Thomas Jobe, MD’69, and a son. and Central Connecticut State Univer- launching the consulting firm Power and Sharon C. Walsh, AM’71, PhD’88, died sity. He also ran a private marital and fam- Energy International in 1979. He also was July 25 in Chicago. She was 69. An English ily counseling practice. He is survived by an adjunct professor at the University of professor for 28 years at Loyola Univer- his wife, Mary; six daughters; two sons; Wisconsin–Madison. Chen is survived sity Chicago, Walsh founded and directed a sister; and many grandchildren and by his wife, Rosemary; three daughters; Loyola’s Shared Text Project, in which great-grandchildren. a son; two brothers; two sisters; and nine writing faculty work with groups of stu - John A. Weil, SM’50, PhD’55, a chemist, grandchildren. dents around a particular theme or text. died November 17, 2010, in Saskatoon, Susan A. (Blessing) McConnell, AB’64, Serving for two years as freshman dean of Saskatchewan, Canada. He was 81. Weil died May 23 in Glenview, IL. She was the College of Arts and Sciences, she also taught at Princeton and was a senior 69. McConnell taught math at Glenbrook published three books on argumentation scientist at Argonne National Labora - North High School before teaching confir- for composition courses. She is survived tory before joining the University of Sas- mation classes at a Mt. Prospect Lutheran by her husband, Richard, and a sister. katchewan, where he retired as professor church for 17 years. She also was a scout emeritus in 1996. An expert in electron leader for more than 25 years. McConnell 2010s paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, is survived by her husband, John W. Mc- Weil won the Spectroscopy Society of Connell, SB’64, MAT’66; two daughters; Morgan Buerkett, ’14, died in a private- Canada’s 2000 Gerhard Herzberg Award. three sons; and eight grandchildren. plane crash July 24 near Rantoul, IL. She Survivors include a daughter; a son; broth- Margaret “Peg” A. Olsen , U-High’63, was 19. A member of the University’s vol - er Claude Weil, X’56; four grandchildren; AB’67, an expert in fiscal law, died May leyball team and the Delta Gamma soror- and two great-grandchildren. 10 in Arden, NC. She was 64. Olsen spent ity, Buerkett graduated in 2010 from St. William P. M. McNiff, MBA’58, died April more than three decades with the US De- Thomas More High School in Champaign, 12 in Tustin, CA. He was 90. After retir - partment of Defense, serving in the Navy’s IL. Her parents also died in the crash. She ing from the Air Force in 1963, McNiff Office of the General Counsel. She retired is survived by her grandparents and a started a second career as a cost accounting in 2003. Survivors include her stepmother sister.

94 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

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the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011 95

Lite of the mind

covering the campus Comparisons may be odious, but that As we worked on the redesign public. You want belles lettres? hasn’t stopped readers from comparing unveiled with this issue, we started Colorful photography of exotic the Magazine to numerous other making our own comparisons, populations in their native garb? publications—whether as a compliment imagining newsstand titles revamped Cutting-edge science? Competitive or as an insult. (See Letters for the to emphasize different niches of speed readers? We’ve got them all latest musings in this vein.) the University of Chicago reading covered.—Mary Ruth Yoe

Laser Daze illustrations by aaron opie aaron by illustrations

600 Wpm

96 the university of chicago magazine | sept–oct 2011

Te ac ha ble Mome nt s Can Tho, Vietnam – 2011 Alumni Study Trip

Into Africa centers of culture and MArch 3–15, 2012 Art in the Mediterranean A voyage exploring West Africa’s traditional AprIL 14–27, 2012 cultures and hidden nature reserves A voyage from Seville to Venice Led by rALph Austen, p rofessor Led by JAMes r edfIeLd, professor In eMerItus of AfrIcA n hIstory the coMMIttee on s ocIAL thouGht

Voyage of discovery: Waterways of holland Wonders of the Galapagos and belgium MArch 23–31, 2012 AprIL 27–MAy 5, 2012 Explore the natural beauty of this archipelago Experience the culture and history Led by JAMes h opson, professor of the Low Countries eMerItus of or GAnIsMAL bIoLoGy Led by rIchA rd buMsteAd, unIVersIty And AnAtoMy of chIcAGo LAndscApe ArchItect

For more information about the trips, including links to the available brochures, please visit alumniandfriends.uchicago.edu/studytrips. If you would like to be added to our travel mailing list, or for any travel-related questions, e-mail [email protected] or call 800.955.0065.

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