It Happened at U-M
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May 6, 2024
The university’s first gift — in 13 volumes
The first recorded gift from an individual to the university came from a well-to-do fur trader who never set foot in Ann Arbor. In 1840, Charles W.W. Borup shipped to U-M a highly regarded German encyclopedia set. Borup’s donation of 13 volumes gave U-M its first gift and a solid scholarly foundation in its fledgling library.
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April 29, 2024
Family trees and the ‘striking incidence’ of cancer
For years, U-M pathologist Aldred Scott Warthin studied the lives — and deaths from cancer — of an extended Ann Arbor family. In 1913, he wrote a landmark paper sharing that cancer could be passed on from generation to generation. Warthin’s research became the foundation of what is known as Lynch Syndrome.
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April 22, 2024
College Republicans and their U-M roots
In mid-May of 1892, hundreds of students from universities around the country gathered on the University of Michigan campus. When the students departed late that evening, it was as the newly christened American Republican College League, a national political group that continues today as the College Republicans.
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April 15, 2024
The ‘rare and curious’ Stearns Collection
Frederick Stearns had never purchased a musical instrument, but a small guitar caught his eye. It was called a quirten and dated to 1807. He acquired instruments for the next 17 years, focusing on the “rare and curious.” And then he donated his vast collection to the University of Michigan.
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April 8, 2024
The ‘harrowing experience’ of meeting Robert Frost
Robert Frost came to campus in the fall of 1921 to be U-M’s inaugural Creative Fellow in the Creative Arts, an experiment carried out by President Marion L. Burton. The idea of a university hosting an artist was not original to U-M, but it was a concept that resonated with Burton and even more so with Frost.
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April 1, 2024
‘Michigan is not to be outdone’
When U-M established a course in the principles of aerodynamics in 1914, the seven young men who gathered before a professor in the West Engineering Building quietly made history. Professor Felix W. Pawlowski’s “Theory of Aviation” class was the first aeronautical engineering course taught in the United States.
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March 25, 2024
Saving Michigan’s forests from ‘the most appalling consequences’
Volney M. Spalding, an 1873 U-M graduate who taught botany and zoology, worried about the fate of northern Michigan’s magnificent forests. In the fall of 1881, with the opening of the School of Political Science, Spalding began teaching what was considered the first forestry course in the United States.
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March 18, 2024
Born to handle winning
When Jim Abbott pitched his first Little League game as an 11-year-old growing up in Flint, he fired a no-hitter. It was a glimpse of the extraordinary career to come. Born without a right hand, Abbott played baseball at U-M and the major leagues and was inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007.
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March 11, 2024
Dr. Death comes to campus
Nicknamed “Dr. Death” early in his medical career because of his strong support of euthanasia, Jack Kevorkian was a 1952 graduate of the Medical School. Kevorkian’s papers, including recorded conversations with desperate patients, were donated to the university after his own (unassisted) death.
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March 4, 2024
Engineering a prominent career
George Maceo Jones earned three degrees from U-M over a decade. When he received his doctorate in 1934, he became the first African American man in the country with a Ph.D. in civil engineering. He settled in Chicago, where he established a practice as a civil engineer and focused on public housing projects.
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