America 250: Scientific Illinois

THE PRAIRIE STATE, THE SUCKER STATE, Land of Lincoln: Illinois has been known by a variety of monikers during its long association with the federal union; however, one might think of our state as the “Nation's Laboratory.” Certainly, Boston with Harvard and MIT and California with Silicon Valley have legitimate claims to national scientific prestige, but Illinois certainly rivals those and other American STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) centers when it comes to intellectual achievement.Illinois universities have produced over 130 Nobel Laureates, with most coming from STEM fields. The University of Chicago is, in fact, listed third globally, with nearly one hundred Laureates; also boasting prize winners are the University of Illinois, Northwestern University, and the Illinois Institute of Technology. These institutions house leading centers for research, including the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration & Research in Astrophysics, Pritzker Institute of Biomedical Science and Engineering, the Center for Clinical and Translational Science, among others. In addition, large-scale campuses with global STEM recognition include the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.Systematic investigation and utilization of natural resources for the human community predate White settlement of what became Illinois. In recognition of Indigenous medicine and technology of the Illiniwek, Pottawatomi, Anishinaabe, and other peoples, ethnoscience studies have uncovered a fascinating history. UIUC's Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology incorporates Indigenous interpretive tools for alternative intellectual explorations, and Chicagoland has seen various presentations of Indigenous ethnobotany in recent years. As White settlers moved into the region and began confiscating land and monopolizing natural resources, they turned to the technologies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to remake the natural landscape into profitable economic regions. In terms of technological developments locally that profited commercial farming, the McCormick Reaper produced in Chicago, John Deere's development of the steel-edged plow in Grand Detour, and the creation of barbed wire in DeKalb proved to have national if not international impact.With the secession of Southern states 1860–1861, Northern boosters of science, education, and technology were finally able to enact the long-desired Morrill Land-Grant College Act in 1862. No state benefitted more from this legislation than Illinois, where geographic centrality, superior transportation systems, a booming industrial center in Chicago, and national political prominence afforded a special opportunity for forging links among the commercial, intellectual, and educational elites of the Midwest. While the University of Illinois became a global leader in engineering, sciences, and humanities, it also served the people of the state superbly through its vast extension network that provided services to farmers, consumers, and students as well as serving as a model for other similar extension programs throughout the country.Into the twentieth century with the University of Illinois and the newly established University of Chicago blazing the trail, Illinoisians enjoyed interfacing with leading STEM lights nationally and internationally. Argonne National Laboratory, founded in 1946, is the largest national laboratory in the Midwest. Its beginnings were with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, and it has become a leading facility for the study of energy, computing, and national defense. A little more than two decades after the founding of Argonne, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) began operations. A unique facility combing high energy research, educational facilities, and community involvement, Fermi boasted the world's most energetic particle collider before the construction of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. It is certainly not surprising the United States Department of Energy decided to operate two of its largest research facilities in what became known as the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor outside of Chicago. Beginning with Enrico Fermi's research at the University of Chicago in 1941 on the Manhattan Project, including the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction under the stands of the university's football stadium, the university physics program under Fermi's tutelage emerged as a world leader where scholars such as Tsung-Dao Lee, Owen Chamberlain, Jerome Isaac Friedman, and James Cronin pursued graduate studies.In fact, Illinois has had a remarkable slate of noteworthy physicists among its citizens. With nine physics Nobel Prize winners born in Illinois and another forty-four associated with University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Argonne, and Fermilab, it would be impossible to provide an exhaustive overview of notable physicists in this space. What follows, in roughly chronological order, are some of the most notable, and unique, physicists with ties to the “Nation's Laboratory.” Albert A. Michelson was the first head of the physics department at the fledgling University of Chicago. Perhaps best known for the Michelson-Morley experiment that disproved the existence of the luminiferous ether, Michelson became the first American to win a Nobel Prize in science when he won the physics Nobel in 1907. A former assistant of Michelson at Chicago, Robert A. Millikan, would become a professor of physics at the University of Chicago. Millikan performed the famous “oil drop experiment” at Chicago that demonstrated the ratio between the charge and mass of the electron and contributed to him eventually winning the Nobel Prize in physics in 1923. Following the departure of Millikan from Chicago in 1921, a new physicist emerged from the University of Chicago's physics department in the form of Arthur Compton, who engaged in one of the most famous scientific debates of the mid-twentieth century with Millikan over the nature of cosmic rays. Compton himself would claim the Nobel Prize in physics in 1927 for his discovery of the eponymous Compton effect, which describes the scattering of light off electrons. One of Compton's students, Luis W. Alvarez, who completed his bachelor's, master's, and PhD at Chicago, would go on to make a name for himself as one of the most successful and eccentric physicists of his age. Alvarez won the 1968 Nobel Prize in physics for his contributions to elementary particle physics, especially his pioneering experimental techniques involving hydrogen bubble chambers. Alvarez's interests were broad, and he made foundational contributions in many fields outside of physics. He explained the kinematics of JFK's assassination in a famous video that features in almost every documentary on the subject, pioneered the field of muon tomography and applied it to create the first non-light-based image of the Pyramid of Khafre, and, alongside his son, pioneered the theory of a meteor impact causing the extinction of the dinosaurs.Contemporaneously, at the University of Illinois, two professors were making their own contributions to Illinois’ physics legacy. Each made groundbreaking contributions to their own subfields—Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar to astrophysics and John Bardeen to condensed matter physics. Each would receive a Nobel Prize for their work, and Bardeen would become the first and to date only person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes in physics. Bardeen's second prize, for a microscopic theory of superconductivity, was awarded for work done at Illinois alongside his graduate student John R. Schrieffer and collaborator Leon Cooper. Chandrasekhar lends his name to one of the most famous quantities in astrophysics, “the Chandrasekhar Limit,” which describes the maximum stable mass of a white dwarf star. A fellow contemporary at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory was Maria Goeppert-Mayer. Goeppert-Mayer was only the second woman to ever win a Nobel Prize in physics when she won the 1963 prize for her explanation of nuclear structure. Her work would have far-reaching implications and would inspire many of the physicists and chemists involved in the hunt for superheavy elements. The last addition to the list is Leon Lederman, the long-time director of Fermilab and professor at the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology. Lederman was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in physics for his research on neutrinos, “ghost particles” that we still chase today, but is perhaps even more well known for his work as a science communicator. His book The God Particle made particle physics topics, especially the Higgs Boson, popular among mainstream audiences. Noted for his sense of humor, Lederman was known for his antics as much as his science. To give a small taste of Lederman's trademark humor, the day after the Superconducting Super Collider was announced to be located in Texas rather than at Fermilab, Lederman gave what was expected to be a somber address to the employees of Fermilab while wearing a novelty, oversized cowboy hat.Undoubtedly, Illinois has had its share of national—even international—figures throughout its history. Saul Bellow and Ernest Hemingway were major literary giants. Walter Payton and Michael Jordan were idolized athletes. Mother Jones and Phyllis Shlafly were significant political figures. Muddy Waters and Miles Davis shaped modern music. However, when one considers the contributions of Illinoisians to scientific inquiry, discovery, and application, a case may be made for a claim to be the “Nation's Laboratory.”For further information, please see:“History and Archives.” Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Accessed August 14, 2025. https://history.fnal.gov/history-fermi.html.“Our History.” Argonne National Laboratory. Accessed August 14, 2025. https://www.anl.gov/our-history.“Our History.” University of Chicago Department of Physics. Accessed August 14, 2025. https://physics.uchicago.edu/about/our-history/.