George and Muriel Beadle with a feline companion at their home in Pasadena, California, in 1961, prior to their move to Chicago later that year. (Wide World Photos/Associated Press Wire Photo, UChicago Photographic Archive, apf1-00440, University of Chicago Library)
Guess the presidents
Test your knowledge of UChicago history.
2
Alumni who have become University president (including incoming president Paul Alivisatos, AB’81)
5
Presidents who have served for more than 10 years
30
Age of the youngest president
1
Nobel Prize winners who have served as University president
17
Cats owned by the Nobelist before moving to Chicago
3
New global centers opened by the president who opened more than any other
2
Times one president’s portrait has been stolen from Hutchinson Commons
Answers:
- Edward H. Levi, Lab’28, PhB’32, JD’35, was the first alumni president.
- Hanna Holborn Gray, William Rainey Harper, Robert Maynard Hutchins, Harry Pratt Judson, and Robert J. Zimmer served for more than a decade.
- Robert Maynard Hutchins was the youngest president.
- George W. Beadle shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the “discovery that genes act by regulating definite chemical events” and owned 17 cats before moving to Chicago. (Two came with them.)
- Zimmer oversaw the opening of global centers in Beijing, Delhi, and Hong Kong.
- Gray’s portrait was stolen twice. She has mixed feelings about the painting and joked that “it was a pity it was recovered.”