It Happened at U-M
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February 24, 2025
First weather report’s creator had U-M roots
Cleveland Abbe, a U-M employee who studied astronomy in the late 1850s, eventually turned his focus to the weather and in 1869, created a regional weather service, based in Cincinnati. Not long after, newspapers across the country were printing Abbe’s daily reports called “probabilities,” and weather forecasts were born.
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February 17, 2025
The story behind U-M’s fight song
The rousing tune of “The Victors” is familiar to most U-M faculty and staff. What may be less widely known is the fight song’s origin. In November 1898, student Louis Elbel was in the stands when U-M’s football team beat the University of Chicago for an undefeated season. The song came to him during postgame revelry.
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February 10, 2025
A novelist grows in Ann Arbor
Years before Betty Smith published her best-selling, semi-autobiographical novel, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” in 1943, she gained her voice as a writer at U-M. Smith arrived in Ann Arbor in the 1920s and snuck into the university’s drama, writing, journalism and literature courses to see what the students were learning there.
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February 3, 2025
A disease’s gene is discovered
In May 1989, geneticist-physician Francis Collins of U-M was part of a research group that isolated the gene for cystic fibrosis and identified a faulty protein it produced that they believe caused the disease. Identifying the gene took eight years and was part of a broader project, known as “positional cloning.”
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January 27, 2025
Athletics kicked off with cricket
In 1860, students on U‑M’s campus mobilized to form the school’s first official club sport, and it wasn’t football or baseball. It was cricket. The Pioneer Cricket Club, consisting of 25 male members led by U‑M student Frank Todd, set up their wickets for the old English sport right in the middle of State Street.
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October 28, 2024
An historic public health degree
Paul B. Cornely graduated from U-M in 1934, making him the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in public health in the United States. Cornely then moved to Washington, D.C., where he taught at Howard University for 39 years, fighting for the desegregation of hospitals and equal health care opportunities for all.
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October 21, 2024
Long line of genetics
The U-M Department of Genetics officially opened in 1956, the first department in the U.S. dedicated to human genetics. James V. Neel served as its chair until his retirement in 1984. During his time leading the department, Neel propelled research surrounding the ways in which the environment can impact genetics.
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October 14, 2024
A forest of knowledge
Following a period in which Michigan’s logging industry cleared acres upon acres of densely packed forests, U-M became the first in the nation to offer courses in forestry in 1881. The School of Forestry and Conservation, now the School for Environment and Sustainability, opened in 1927 with Samuel T. Dana as dean.
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October 7, 2024
‘New era for dental students’
In 1875, Gov. John J. Bagley signed a bill enabling the Board of Regents to establish and maintain a dental school in connection with the Medical School. This marked the establishment of the nation’s first state university dental school, heralding a “new era for dental students.”
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September 30, 2024
Supporting a broad spectrum
When U-M created the Human Sexuality Office in 1971, it became the first university to establish an office dedicated to supporting gay and lesbian students. The Human Sexuality Office changed its name to the Lesbian Gay Male Programs Office in the 1980s, and in 2008, it became known as the Spectrum Center.
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