It Happened at U-M
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February 19, 2024
‘A project that will aid all mankind’
In the wake of the terrifying atomic bomb that ended World War II, U-M students and alumni looked for ways to channel a destructive power into safe, beneficial uses. The Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project was launched in 1948 to honor 579 U-M students, faculty and alumni who died in the war.
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February 12, 2024
‘I really disliked writing papers’
Thomas Knoll, a doctoral student in computer vision algorithmics, was trying to write his dissertation about the processing of digital images. But he found working on a software program he’d been noodling with far more interesting. That program was Photoshop, which brought Knoll and his brother John an Academy Award.
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February 5, 2024
A pioneer admired by classmates and patients
When Ida Gray graduated from what was then called the U-M College of Dental Surgery in 1890, she became the nation’s first Black female dentist. A year later she was in practice, prompting a writer to note, “Her blushing, winning way makes you feel like finding an extra tooth any way to allow her to pull.”
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January 29, 2024
Changing attitudes with a groundbreaking novel
Forman Brown came to U-M in 1918, shy, aloof and attracted to men. Brown used his U-M experiences as the foundation for “Better Angel,” a 1933 semi-biographical novel he wrote using the pseudonym of Richard Meeker. “Better Angel” was reissued in 1987 to acclaim, prompting Brown to step forward as its author.
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January 22, 2024
Racing to win a historic title
Orval Wardel Johnson, a member of the U-M track team, faced All-American quarterback Pete Elliott in a bid to serve as president of the LSA Class of 1949. Johnson prevailed, and LSA seniors had elected their first African American class president, a first for Michigan and any predominantly white university in the nation.
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January 15, 2024
A priceless collection discovered, lost, and found again
When Professor Francis W. Kelsey returned to Ann Arbor in 1920 from an expedition in Egypt, he brought back the seeds of what is today the largest papyrology collection in North America — but not before the initial papyri were lost on a London shipping dock en route to the U.S. and recovered by Kelsey himself.
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December 4, 2023
‘You’ve got to be excellent’
Willie Hobbs first stepped foot on U-M’s campus as an 18-year-old first-year student in 1952. Twenty years later, as Willie Hobbs Moore, she was a three-time U-M alumna and the first African American woman in the country with a Ph.D. in physics, eventually rising to the executive level ranks of Ford Motor Company.
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November 20, 2023
‘I’m just like everybody else’
Marina Oswald was left widowed when her husband was shot and killed in Dallas in 1963. Just over a year later, she enrolled at U-M for classes at the English Language Institute. Oswald studied alongside some 30 international students in an eight-week course. She left town on Feb. 28, 1965, an alumna of U-M.
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November 13, 2023
Lessons in reading, writing and the Bible
In 1818, young people in the village of Detroit made their way into the new academy built by the University of Michigania for the inaugural class of the first Sunday school in the Territory of Michigan. The initial U-M classes were at the elementary school level, with parents paying a small subscription fee.
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November 6, 2023
Sharing more than a birthday
Joan and Janice Ottenbacher were always close as sisters. A lifesaving operation at University Hospital in 1964 made their bond extraordinary. The 15-year-old identical twins were patients in the first human organ transplant in Michigan when Joan donated her kidney to Janice.
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