University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved statehood and is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. The main campus is located on the shores of Lake Mendota; the university also owns and operates a arboretum south of the main campus.
UW–Madison is organized into 13 schools and colleges, which enrolled approximately 34,200 undergraduate and 14,300 graduate and professional students in 2024. Its academic programs include 136 undergraduate majors, 148 master's degree programs, and 120 doctoral programs. Wisconsin is one of the founding members of the Association of American Universities and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". UW–Madison was also the home of both the prominent "Wisconsin School" of economics and diplomatic history. It ranked sixth among U.S. universities in research expenditures in 2023, according to the National Science Foundation.
, 20 Nobel laureates, 41 Pulitzer Prize winners, 2 Fields medalists, and 1 Turing Award recipient have been affiliated with UW–Madison as alumni, faculty, or researchers. It is also a leading producer of Fulbright Scholars and MacArthur Fellows. The Wisconsin Badgers compete in 25 intercollegiate sports in NCAA Division I, primarily in the Big Ten Conference, and have won 31 national championships. Wisconsin students and alumni have won 50 Olympic medals.
History
Establishment
The university had its official beginnings when the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature in its 1838 session passed a law incorporating a "University of the Territory of Wisconsin", and a high-ranking board of visitors was appointed. However, this body never actually accomplished anything before Wisconsin was incorporated as a state in 1848.The Wisconsin Constitution provided for "the establishment of a state university, at or near the seat of state government..." and directed by the state legislature to be governed by a board of regents and administered by a chancellor. On July 26, 1848, Nelson Dewey, Wisconsin's first governor, signed the act that formally created the University of Wisconsin. John H. Lathrop became the university's first chancellor, in the fall of 1849. With John W. Sterling as the university's first professor, the first class of 17 students met at Madison Female Academy on February 5, 1849.
A permanent campus site was soon selected: an area of "bounded north by Fourth lake, east by a street to be opened at right angles with King street", "south by Mineral Point Road, and west by a carriage-way from said road to the lake." The regents' building plans called for a "main edifice fronting towards the Capitol, three stories high, surmounted by an observatory for astronomical observations." This building, University Hall, now known as Bascom Hall, was finally completed in 1859. On October 10, 1916, a fire destroyed the building's dome, which was never replaced. North Hall, constructed in 1851, was actually the first building on campus. In 1854, Levi Booth and Charles T. Wakeley became the first graduates of the university, and in 1892 the university awarded its first PhD to future university president Charles R. Van Hise.
Late 19th century
Female students were first admitted to the University of Wisconsin during the American Civil War in 1863. The Wisconsin State Legislature formally designated the university as the Wisconsin land-grant institution in 1866. In 1875, William Smith Noland became the first known African-American to graduate from the university.Science Hall was constructed in 1888 as one of the world's first buildings to use I-beams. On April 4, 1892, the first edition of the student-run The Daily Cardinal was published. In 1894 an unsuccessful attempt was made by Oliver Elwin Wells, Superintendent of Public Instruction of Wisconsin to expel Richard T. Ely from his chair of director of the School of Economics, Political Science, and History at Wisconsin for purportedly teaching socialistic doctrines. This effort failed, with the Wisconsin state Board of Regents issuing a ringing proclamation in favor of academic freedom, acknowledging the necessity for freely "sifting and winnowing" among competing claims of truth.
Early 20th century and the Wisconsin Idea
Research, teaching, and service at the UW is influenced by a tradition known as the "Wisconsin Idea", first articulated by UW–Madison President Charles Van Hise in 1904, when he declared "I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the University reaches every home in the state." The Wisconsin Idea holds that the boundaries of the university should be the boundaries of the state, and that the research conducted at UW–Madison should be applied to solve problems and improve health, quality of life, the environment, and agriculture for all citizens of the state. The Wisconsin Idea permeates the university's work and helps forge close working relationships among university faculty and students, and the state's industries and government. Based in Wisconsin's populist history, the Wisconsin Idea continues to inspire the work of the faculty, staff, and students who aim to solve real-world problems by working together across disciplines and demographics.During this period, numerous significant research milestones were met, including the discoveries of Vitamin A and Vitamin B in 1913 and 1916, respectively, by Elmer V. McCollum and Marguerite Davis, as well as the "Single-grain experiment" conducted by Stephen Moulton Babcock and Edwin B. Hart from 1907 to 1911, paving the way for modern nutrition as a science. In 1923, Harry Steenbock invented a process for adding vitamin D to milk and other foods, and in 1925, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation was chartered to control patenting and patent income on UW–Madison inventions. The UW Graduate School had been separated in 1904-1905.
In 1909, William Purdy and Paul Beck wrote On, Wisconsin, the UW–Madison athletic fight song. Radio station 9XM, the oldest continually operating radio station in the United States, was founded on campus in 1919. The Memorial Union opened in 1928, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum opened in 1934.
The University of Wisconsin Experimental College was a two-year college designed and led by Alexander Meiklejohn in 1927 with a great books, liberal arts curriculum. Students followed a uniform curriculum that sought to teach democracy and foster an intrinsic love of learning, but the college developed a reputation for radicalism and wanton anarchy in which students lived and worked with their teachers, had no fixed schedule, no compulsory lessons, and no semesterly grades. The advisers taught primarily through tutorial instead of lectures. The Great Depression and lack of outreach to Wisconsinites and UW faculty led to the college's closure in 1932.
In 1936, UW–Madison began an artist-in-residence program with John Steuart Curry, the first ever at a university. In the 1940s, Warfarin was developed at UW by the laboratory of Karl Paul Link and named after the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. During World War II, the University of Wisconsin was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.
Late 20th century to present
Over time, additional campuses were added to the university. The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee was created in 1956, and UW–Green Bay and UW–Parkside in 1968. Ten freshman-sophomore centers were also added to this system. In 1971, Wisconsin legislators passed a law merging the University of Wisconsin with the nine universities and four freshman-sophomore branch campuses of the Wisconsin State Universities System, creating the University of Wisconsin System and bringing the two higher education systems under a single board of regents.UW–Madison's Howard Temin, a virologist, co-discovered the enzyme reverse transcriptase in 1969, and The Badger Herald was founded as a conservative student paper the same year.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, UW–Madison was shaken by a series of student protests, and by the use of force by authorities in response, comprehensively documented in the film The War at Home. The first major demonstrations protested the presence on campus of recruiters for the Dow Chemical Company, which supplied the napalm used in the Vietnam War. Authorities used force to quell the disturbance. The struggle was documented in the book, They Marched into Sunlight, as well as the PBS documentary Two Days in October. Among the students injured in the protest was former Madison mayor Paul Soglin.
Another target of protest was the Army Mathematics Research Center in Sterling Hall, which was also home of the physics department. The student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, published a series of investigative articles stating that AMRC was pursuing research directly pursuant to US Department of Defense requests, and supportive of military operations in Vietnam. AMRC became a magnet for demonstrations, in which protesters chanted "U.S. out of Vietnam! Smash Army Math!" On August 24, 1970, near 3:40 am, a bomb exploded next to Sterling Hall, aimed at destroying the Army Math Research Center. Despite the late hour, a post doctoral physics researcher, Robert Fassnacht, was in the lab and was killed in the explosion. The physics department was severely damaged, while the intended target, the AMRC, was scarcely affected. Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, and David Fine were found responsible for the blast. Leo Burt was identified as a suspect, but was never apprehended or tried.
In 1998, UW–Madison's James Thomson first isolated and cultured human embryonic stem cells.