Volume 111, Number 1
Fall/18

Features

A change will come

At 100, civil rights leader Timuel D. Black Jr., AM’54, has seen change—and made it happen.

Plans of attack

Why doesn’t the immune system fight cancer more often? Can we teach it how?

Supercharged

In CAR T-cell therapy, the immune system gets a boost that can be lifesaving.

Art and artifice

Matinee idol and Oscar nominee Sessue Hayakawa is widely remembered as a UChicago alumnus. But was he?

Historian with a camera

Advised to “shoot what you love,” Henry Horenstein, EX’69, took pictures of country music stars and their fans.

Smear tactic

The human impulse to censor plays out on the pages of a medieval Latin grammar manuscript.

The ace

Kim Ng, AB’90, has found her sweet spot as MLB’s senior vice president for baseball operations.

The new romantics

Director Claire Scanlon, AB’93, has worked on shows including GLOW and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Now she’s reinventing the romantic comedy.

Editor’s notes

Caught in the legend

A famed actor’s UChicago story unravels; and a new look for the Magazine comes together.

Letters

Readers sound off

Readers celebrate the pleasures of book collecting and getting lost, recall Richard Stern’s criticism and Enrico Fermi’s culinary choices, and more. 

On the agenda

A Community of Scholars

Dean Amanda Woodward reports from a Social Sciences Division with close ties and broad horizons.

UChicago Journal

Taking on trauma

By treating violence as a public health issue, UChicago Medicine trauma experts seek to transform care on Chicago’s South Side.

Something new under the sun

Justin Kasper, AB’99, once built a working nuclear reactor for Scav. Now he’s built an equally impossible instrument for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.

The Constitution goes to school

Law School professor Justin Driver explores how education law became a cultural flashpoint.

Everyone can have great skin

Start by eating healthy and wearing sunscreen, says Hollywood’s go-to aesthetician Joanna Vargas, AB’93.

The hours

A study from the School of Social Service Administration points the way toward better lives for hourly workers—and a stronger corporate bottom line.

Paper chase

When tariffs on Canadian newsprint threatened US papers, political scientist turned trade lawyer Elliot J. Feldman, AB’69, built a case and a coalition.

Triple crowns

Meet three UChicago alumni who earned front-page honors in 2018. 

Epic journey

First-year students set sail on the maroon-dark sea.

W. R. Harper’s Index: Yes, you can declare a quadruple major

College majors, by the numbers.

Abstracts: Faculty research

Researchers discover that ancient children climbed trees; develop new ways to build molecules; investigate the success of political outsiders; and examine the persistence of the racial earnings gap. 

For the Record: University news 

A selection of the latest headlines from UChicago.

Peer review

Releases

Alumni books, films, and recordings.

Notes

Highlights from the latest alumni news columns.

Alumni essay

The Steps to 55 Steps

When Mark Bruce Rosin, AB’68, visited mental hospital patients as a College student, it opened the doorway to his 2018 screenplay.

Deaths

University obituaries

Recent faculty, staff, and alumni obituaries.

The UChicagoan

Bonnie Jo Campbell, AB84

Questions for the award-winning novelist and short story writer.

Plus, in Inquiry …

Network building

A note from the dean of the Physical Sciences Division.

Cluster and synthesize

Whether finding neutrinos, improving solar energy storage, or programming quantum computers, the Physical Sciences Division’s Eckhardt Scholars collaborate, create, and communicate.

Burning ambition

Reatha Clark King, SM’60, PhD’63, was one of the less hidden figures in the space race.

Distortion

Astrophysicist Brian Nord looks for lenses through AI eyes.

Data mind

Computer scientists Heather Zheng, Ben Zhao, and Blase Ur mine data to study behavior and expose security flaws.

Shifting sands

Associate professor Charles Smart summits the Abelian sandpile.

Origins

Angela Olinto brings high energy to the deanʼs office.