History

  1. February 2, 2023

    Fish preserves earliest fossilized brain of backboned animal

    A 319 million-year-old ray-finned fish fossil at U-M provides new information about early evolutionary history. The fossil was pulled from a coal mine in England more than a century ago.

  2. January 30, 2023

    Heritage Project — The Great Rush

    On Nov. 9, 1872, a squad of U-M medical students had been handed their hats in a rule-free game of football by a crowd of students from the Literary Department.

  3. January 23, 2023

    Heritage Project — The fake news about James Neel

    James van Gundia Neel died of cancer at his home in Ann Arbor on the first day of February 2000. He was 84. He was promptly memorialized as one of the greatest scientists in U-M’s history.

  4. January 16, 2023

    Heritage Project — No laughing matter

    “Tickled to Death,” a musical comedy written, staged and performed by U-M students, generated a buzz in the weeks before Christmas 1924.

  5. January 9, 2023

    Heritage Project — The scientist of peace

    J. David Singer was a pioneer in a new, scientific way of studying war, believing a way to lasting peace might be found if only humankind truly understood how war and peace are made.

  6. December 5, 2022

    Heritage Project — The Michigan scientist who was ‘Arrowsmith’

    When the new novel “Arrowsmith” reached the nation’s bookstores in 1925, the author, Sinclair Lewis, was already the most celebrated American writer of the day.

  7. November 21, 2022

    Heritage Project — Vulcan’s muddy light

    Astronomer James Craig Watson was U-M’s “brightest son.” After discovering 22 asteroids between 1863-77, during a solar eclipse in 1878, Watson was sure he’d observed the rumored intra-mercurial planet Vulcan.

  8. November 14, 2022

    Work begins on U-M’s Inclusive History Project

    Twenty-two members from U-M’s three campuses have joined the committee to frame and design the Inclusive History Project, a multifaceted, years-long effort to study, document and better understand U-M’s history.

  9. November 14, 2022

    Inclusive History Project Framing and Design Committee membership

    The Inclusive History Project’s Framing and Design Committee is led by co-chairs Earl Lewis and Elizabeth Cole.

  10. November 7, 2022

    Heritage Project — Dr. Joy’s undoing

    By all signs, the future was very bright for Douglas Joy in the summer of 1881. By June 1882, Douglas Joy was fighting for his job and, more important, his reputation.