From top to bottom are: Song Kue, Eloise Gerry, Leo Butts, Marguerite Davis, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, and Miyoshi Ikawa. Their work had key impacts on modern marvels such as computers, blood-thinner medications, and vitamins. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY DANIELLE LAWRY. Marguerite Davis image courtesy National Archives, all other images courtesy UW Archives.

In subjects ranging from medicine to ecology, engineering to computer science, the University of Wisconsin’s top-ranked research program has made valuable innovations for the past 175 years. Just a few examples: Harry Steenbock 1916 revealed the benefits of vitamin D; Karl Paul Link 1922, MS1923, PhD1925 discovered the blood thinner warfarin, and James Thomson was a trailblazer in stem-cell research.

But what about some of the lesser-known UW scientists, often overlooked in their time, who made key discoveries? Science is a team effort, even if that isn’t always reflected in the history books. While the following scientists aren’t household names, the research they did and the training they received from UW–Madison helped advance their fields and improve the world.

Warfarin Warrior

Although most people haven’t heard of Miyoshi Ikawa MS’45, PhD’48, they probably have heard of warfarin, the medicine used as a blood thinner.

The story of warfarin, which was patented in 1947, began at the UW in 1933, when a farmer sought the help of biochemistry professor Karl Paul Link. The farmer’s cows, who were eating moldy sweet clover hay, began mysteriously dying from internal bleeding. The animals’ blood wasn’t clotting, so Link and his research team decided to find out why.

Once they discovered the chemical compound responsible for the cows’ thin blood, the researchers worked in the lab to create new variations of the substance, each with slight modifications to its chemical structure. Their goal was to maintain the compound’s blood-thinning effect.

Ikawa, a graduate student in the Link lab; fellow lab member Mark Stahmann PhD’41; and Link created analogue 42, the version that would become what we know today as warfarin. The researchers found the compound was useful as a rat poison. Later, they realized it could also be used as a drug to help people with blood-clotting disorders, a pivotal discovery that has saved countless lives.

Ikawa’s studies here, however, were linked to a darker part of our nation’s past. In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, anti-Japanese sentiment was rampant in the United States. Ikawa was studying at the California Institute of Technology in 1942 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the West Coast a military zone and authorized the forced evacuation and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. With the help of his CalTech graduate adviser, Ikawa was able to relocate to Madison and find a position in Link’s lab.

After finishing his graduate studies at the UW, he returned to the West Coast for postgraduate research at CalTech and UC–Berkeley and became a professor at the University of New Hampshire.

Computer Visionary

The first woman in the country to complete a doctorate in computer science was a UW–Madison grad — and a nun.

In 1932, at 18 years old, Mary Kenneth Keller PhD’65 entered the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Soon after taking her religious vows, Keller began a teaching career and, during summer break, pursued a math degree. She was teaching high school math on the west side of Chicago in the early 1960s when she began to realize the rising importance of computers as a tool in mathematical computation. Intent on learning more, she attended a summer program at Dartmouth College, where she and other high school teachers learned how to operate computers and write simple programs.

Later, when Keller was in her 50s and teaching math during summer school at Iowa’s Clarke College, the school’s president sent her to UW–Madison to pursue a PhD in computer science. In her dissertation, “Inductive Inference on Computer Generated Patterns,” Keller explored the ways computers could be used to mechanize tasks and solve problems.

After earning her doctorate, Keller established the computer science department at Clarke College and gave lectures on computer science at other institutions whenever she could.

She was an avid proponent for women seeking higher education and for working women in general, especially mothers. She was even known to encourage her college students to bring their children to class.

Grade-A Scientist

We know that vitamins exist today thanks in part to the dedication of Marguerite Davis ’26.

Davis, a Wisconsin native, grew up inspired by the women’s rights movement in the late 19th century. She also had an interest in science and began pursuing higher education at the UW before transferring to the University of California to complete her bachelor’s degree. Called back to Wisconsin to help look after her father’s house, Davis hoped to continue her work in science.

Enter: Elmer McCollum, a professor in the UW Department of Agricultural Chemistry. In the early 1900s, McCollum was attempting to create a mixture of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that could replace the standard feed given to animals and optimize their diets. But the animals fed on McCollum’s experimental diet experienced stunted growth, sickness, and even blindness. Something was missing.

With Davis’s help, McCollum began tedious and time-consuming studies to uncover what that something was, helping to feed, care for, and take detailed observations of lab rats.

Some rats were fed a dairy-based fat while others were fed olive oil or lard. The rats fed oil or lard became sick and failed to grow properly, but those who consumed dairy fat continued to grow. Realizing there must be important compounds in the dairy fat, McCollum and Davis extracted those compounds and added them to the oil and lard.

Their hypothesis was confirmed when rats fed the fortified oil or lard were as healthy as those fed dairy fat. In 1913, McCollum and Davis identified the important compound as vitamin A. The two guessed that other foods must also hold these vital nutrients, launching subsequent experiments to pinpint these substances and their benefits.

Each year Davis worked in the lab, McCollum requested a salary for her, but it wasn’t until her sixth year that he finally received the funding. Davis continued to make vital contributions, changing the field of nutrition as we know it.

Trailblazing Pharmacist

Leo Butts 1920 was the first African American to graduate from the UW School of Pharmacy. Butts grew up in Madison, where he was active in civil rights in high school. He became the first African American to play for the UW varsity football team and enlisted in the Students’ Army Training Corps.

But arguably his most important accomplishment at the university was his groundbreaking senior thesis researching the status of African American pharmacists. Butts pieced it together despite limited documentation in the UW libraries. He reached out to prominent African American pharmacists and pharmaceutical organizations, collecting anecdotes and statistics on the number of existing African American pharmacists and drugstores.

In his thesis, he also demonstrated the benefits of increased cooperation between African American doctors and pharmacists: improvements in the health of Black communities and their sense of connection.

After graduating, Butts worked as a pharmacist in Gary, Indiana, but he lost his job during the Great Depression and worked for a time as a mail carrier. Eventually, he returned to his chosen profession, operating a pharmacy until he passed away in 1956. He provided both care and a gathering place for his community.

Unfortunately, the sparse information on African American pharmacists persisted into the 1980s, when James Buchanan ’43, the School of Pharmacy’s second known African American graduate, found himself wondering if he had been the first.

She Saved Trees before It Was Cool

The nation’s first woman microscopist was a UW graduate and professor. Eloise Gerry PhD1921 moved to Madison in 1910 to join the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s then-new Forest Products Laboratory. The lab conducted innovative wood and fiber-use research that contributed to the sustainability of forests. Gerry also continued her education, studying botany and plant pathology. Later, she became a professor at the UW.

In 1916, she started her own research program to help conserve pine trees in the American South. Traveling around the region to collect data, she showed that the lumber industry was cutting down trees at an unsustainable rate. Her research helped to preserve local ecosystems and stabilize the pine-related turpentine industry by enabling more productive and longer-lived trees.

Gerry was proud to be a woman in her field. When she was hired at the Forest Products Laboratory, she recalled that “there wasn’t any man willing to come and do the work.” After earning her doctorate, she was sure to sign her full name, “Dr. Eloise Gerry,” rather than just her first initial and last name so that people would know she was a woman.

She made a point of being active in numerous professional associations, most notably serving as the president of Graduate Women in Science, a global organization that still works to inspire and support women in science. The organization established a fellowship in Gerry’s name that continues to offer research funding to selected fellows.

Education Advocate

Song Kue ’82 was UW–Madison’s first Hmong graduate. His electrical engineering degree made him a highly sought-after employee, and he was recruited by the electronics company E-Systems, where he designed technologies that improved the ability of fighter jets to detect military movement.

Kue and his wife, See, came to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, as Vietnam War refugees in 1975. He spoke some English and was encouraged to pursue higher education at UW–Green Bay’s Sheboygan campus. Kue had experienced limited access to communications while living in Laos, so he decided to apply his interest in computers and mathematics to electrical engineering with hopes of improving communication technology.

He soon transferred to UW–Madison to finish his bachelor’s degree. The Hmong community in Madison was small at that time, and his college career at a primarily white institution didn’t come without challenges. But as an avid soccer player, he was a strong supporter of the university’s soccer team and was proud to be a Badger.

Math was an equalizer to Kue. He saw higher education as a path to success and instilled that belief in his children and among the growing Hmong community in Madison, whom he often tutored in math. He encouraged them to pursue higher education, and several of his children, numerous nieces and nephews, and some of his grandchildren have since attended college, almost all of them at UW–Madison. •

Surgeons use long, thin guidewires to thread catheters into the body’s vascular system to address problem areas. Photo courtesy NECTO student team

Four recent UW–Madison biomedical engineering graduates have invented a simple device that could shave minutes off stroke and aneurysm surgery — minutes that could be crucial in preserving neurological function.

Surgeons use long, thin guidewires to thread catheters into the body’s vascular system to address problem areas, such as a blood clot that’s causing a stroke. They currently rely on technicians to help them load a torque device at the end of the wire to help maneuver it.

The new device is a small plastic cylinder that allows surgeons to simply clip it on at any point along the guidewire without needing to wait on a technician and without needing to slide it off to change catheters or place another therapeutic device, such as a stent.

“The surgeon can just clip it on and get the catheter up to where you want it and then clip it off, deliver the catheter, deliver the therapy, and clip it on if you need it again,” says William Hayes ’23, who served as team lead on the project. “It’s just right there for you, rather than having to have another person six feet away fiddling with the end” of the guidewire.

The device has won two university awards, and the team hopes to license it for commercial use.

A fungus may help create gardens to feed long-distance explorers. Danielle Lamberson Philipp

In January, botanist Simon Gilroy and his lab sent tomatoes into space, their sixth plant-based experiment with NASA on the International Space Station. Nicknamed TASTIE — short for Trichoderma Associated Space Tomato Inoculation Experiment — the project aims to give researchers a better understanding of how plants grow without gravity.

“Plants know up from down, right? They don’t have a brain or anything like that, but shoots grow upward, and roots grow downward. They clearly are using directional information,” Gilroy explains.

But remove gravity from the equation and things get wonky. And stressful. That’s where the team is hoping a common fungus, Trichoderma harziannum, will come in. On Earth, the fungus is known to be beneficial for plant growth, making plants hardier in the face of stressors. In space, it may help grow food for long-distance explorers.

“The moon and Mars — where I think we’re going to go — they’re a long way away,” Gilroy says. “You’re going to have to be able to be self-sustaining at a significant level.”

Recent advances in data analysis allowed the researchers to gain new insights about the impact of 100-year-old laws. PhotoQuest

A new study found that people who were born in “dry” counties during the Prohibition era lived an additional 1.7 years, compared to those born in “wet” counties. Because parts of the United States became dry through state and federal regulation at different times between 1900 and 1930, data from this period provided a natural basis for comparison.

Jason Fletcher MS’03, PhD’06 of the La Follette School of Public Affairs is a coauthor on the study, which was the first to look at the long-term effects of Prohibition on longevity.

“Researchers now understand that exposures during pregnancy, due to interruptions to fetal development, can have long-term cascading effects on later-life health,” Fletcher says. He adds that recent advances in data analysis allowed the researchers to gain new insights about the impact of 100-year-old laws.

The findings could have implications for public health policy during a time when the number of mothers who drink during pregnancy has risen from 9.2 percent in 2011 to nearly 14 percent in 2022.

Damadian is shown here with an MRI machine. Getty Images/Neville Elder

No scalpels required. Thanks to Raymond Damadian ’56’s remarkable invention, it’s no longer necessary to open up the human body to detect cancer or pinpoint an injury.

Damadian built the world’s first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and performed the first full-body scan in 1977, after he discovered that tumors and normal tissue emit response signals that differ in wavelength.

“I thought if we could do on a human what we just did in that test tube, maybe we could build a scanner that would go over the body to hunt down cancer. It was kind of preposterous,” Damadian admitted, “but I had hope.”

That initial scan of a colleague’s thorax took nearly five hours to complete in Damadian’s machine, which he dubbed Indomitable in a nod to achieving what many thought couldn’t be done. Indomitable now resides at the Smithsonian Institution.

Damadian took a unique path to making his contribution to the medical field. As a boy, he attended public school but studied violin at the Juilliard School on weekends. When he was 15, the Ford Foundation gave him a full scholarship to the University of Wisconsin, and he left Juilliard behind. “It was okay,” he said. “I was no Itzhak Perlman.”

But later in life, controversy swirled around him. Damadian wasn’t selected to win a 2003 Nobel Prize when two fellow scientists received recognition for their role in MRI development — and he didn’t take the snub lightly. In keeping with what has been called his “exuberant” personality, Damadian took out full-page ads in the New York Times and other newspapers with the headline, “The Shameful Wrong That Must Be Righted.” The scientific community was abuzz about this unprecedented step, taking sides about whether he deserved a Nobel.

“If I had not been born, would MRI have existed? I don’t think so,” he said.

His supporters believe that he was passed over for the prize in part because of his belief in creationism. A full explanation may come to light when the Nobel’s archives from 2003 are opened in 2053, though Damadian will never see it. He died in 2022. But the debate doesn’t matter to those experiencing pain or facing the possibility of cancer. Some 60 million MRI scans are performed each year, and patients are simply grateful for the machine that provides the answers.

Shifting to clean energy sources can provide enormous benefits for public health in the near term while mitigating climate change in the longer term. Danielle Lawry

Eliminating air-pollution emissions from energy-related activities in the United States would prevent more than 50,000 premature deaths each year and provide more than $600 billion in benefits annually from avoided illness and death, according to a new UW study.

The study reports the health benefits of removing dangerous fine particulates released into the air by electricity generation, transportation, industrial activities, and building functions like heating and cooking. These are also major sources of carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change, since they predominantly rely on burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas.

“Our work provides a sense of the scale of the air-quality health benefits that could accompany deep decarbonization of the U.S. energy system,” says Nick Mailloux PhDx’24, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. “Shifting to clean energy sources can provide enormous benefit for public health in the near term while mitigating climate change in the longer term.”

UW professor Jonathan Patz, senior author of the study, thinks it could motivate more action on climate change.

“My hope is that our research findings might spur decision makers grappling with the necessary move away from fossil fuels to shift their thinking from burdens to benefits,” he says.

Mnookin: “Nearly everyone I’ve met shares a deep sense of pride in this university.”

Jennifer L. Mnookin started her job as UW–Madison chancellor on August 4, and she wasted little time immersing herself in Badger culture. She served Babcock ice cream at an all-campus party on Bascom Hill, posed for pictures with her new friend Bucky Badger, and scheduled listening sessions with faculty, staff, alumni, student groups, legislators, tribal leaders, and community members. Mnookin also took time to tell On Wisconsin about her unique approach to creating a vision for the UW’s future.

How are you adapting to life at UW–Madison after 17 years at UCLA?

It’s been an exciting first few months, a whirlwind but wonderful. I’ve been soaking in as much as I can about our university, our broader community, and the state. That’s involved many meetings with faculty, staff, students, and alums, and opportunities to do things like meet with fruit farmers who partner with one of our agricultural research stations, hold a baby pig at a county fair, and start to meet community leaders and legislators in Madison and across the state. Provost Karl Scholz has teased me that every time he asks me, “How’s it going?” I respond with some enthusiastic version of “Great!” and then share with him some interesting tidbit that I’ve just learned about this amazing university.

What’s so striking is that nearly everyone I’ve met shares a deep sense of pride in this university. Though we might sometimes have different ideas about priorities, virtually everyone does want to see us continue to grow and thrive, and I’ve already benefited from hearing a variety of thoughtful perspectives about UW–Madison’s next chapter.

I’ve also been grateful for the many suggestions about how my husband and I should best embrace our first winter in Wisconsin. I’m hearing that lots of layers are even more important than the perfect winter coat! (I still do have a little time before I actually need that winter wardrobe, right?)

What are your top priorities for your first year at the UW?

My top priority right now is to listen and learn. The best vision for the university’s next chapter isn’t going to emerge from a 10-point list from on high; it’s going to grow out of building a genuinely collective vision for the university’s future. I’ve been asking everyone I meet two questions: What is working well here? And where do you see the most meaningful opportunities for change?

I want to hear ideas that are feasible and concrete, and I also want to hear ideas that are ambitious, creative, and innovative.

I am deeply committed to making sure UW–Madison is a place where we can discuss everything — the ideas we strongly agree with and the ideas we strongly disagree with. That’s sifting and winnowing, and it’s part of what both academic freedom and freedom of speech are all about. At the same time, I want to make sure our students feel safe and supported and know that they belong here even when they’re in discussions with classmates who might have very different worldviews. Both the university as a place of vibrant and sometimes challenging intellectual exchange, and the university as a space of belonging for those who are with us, whatever their identities, backgrounds, or political perspectives, are very important to me.

How do you see UW–Madison leveraging its strengths to make a difference in the world?

I’ve spent my academic career at top public universities, and they all have a mission to make a difference in the world — but here at UW–Madison, that mission is even a bit stronger and more foundational to our identity and sense of purpose. There are several reasons, I think, that we’ve been able to build this culture and to engage in real-world problem-solving in an energetic way.

The first is our dedication to working across disciplines to solve complex problems. We have veterinarians working with physicians, pharmacists, and engineers, for example, on research related to animal health that also has major implications for human health in areas like cancer treatment and animal–human disease transmission. Cross-disciplinary work can be enormously challenging, but we know that bringing creative researchers together across disciplines to work on critical problems can spark extraordinary discovery and innovation. There’s a serious interest in thinking across here, and that’s a great thing.

Related to this is a second important value, the Wisconsin Idea. Our commitment to public service shapes the way we teach and drives many of the crosscurrents that make our research enterprise extraordinarily broad, deep, and excellent. As we approach our 175th anniversary next year, we have an opportunity to celebrate the Wisconsin Idea in a way that further builds UW–Madison as a national and global model for what a great public university can be.

Finish this sentence: “I’ll have a brat, cheese curds, and …”

A scoop of Babcock Dairy’s orange custard chocolate chip!

“Our brains want our expectations to be supported,” says Cox. Eric Roman Beining Photography

A new UW study shows why letting stereotypes inform our judgments of unfamiliar people can be such a hard habit to break. It found that stereotypes self-perpetuate in our minds, growing stronger with use.

“Think back to when you were in grade school learning your multiplication tables, and you would repeat them in your mind,” says William Cox MS’08, PhD’15, a UW scientist who studies prejudice. “Going through the world making assumptions about other people with stereotypes we’ve learned is another form of mental practice. With more rehearsal, those assumptions get stronger over time, even when we have no real evidence to back them up.”

Cox, Xizhou Xie ’16, and UW–Madison psychology professor Patricia Devine put more than 1,000 people to work on a stereotyping task that involved reading social media profiles (some of them seeded with stereotypical information) and deciding whether the men in the profiles were gay or straight. Some received feedback about whether they were correct or incorrect, and others received no feedback. Then they read more profiles so researchers could see how the previous feedback affected their answers.

When the feedback mostly confirmed stereotypes, people stereotyped even more over time. Meanwhile, people who received feedback countering stereotypes didn’t seem to learn from it, continuing to stereotype at the same rate. Even more distressing, the people who received no feedback showed learning patterns like the people whose stereotypes were confirmed.

For Cox, the results support the theories behind the neuroscience of learning.

When an uncertain prediction is confirmed — like successfully guessing which number will come up on a roll of dice — that confirmation activates reward processes in our brains. The result is a pleasant little chemical release that reinforces the value of the prediction. In Cox’s new studies, this neural-reward process made stereotyping more appealing than accuracy. Participants continued relying on stereotypes even when the feedback said that they were inaccurate.

“Our brains want our expectations to be supported,” says Cox. “Because of that reward engagement, we can start becoming addicted, in a way, to stereotyping. Simply understanding that this happens is an important way to check those assumptions and not let them influence your judgment.”

Atir: “If we fail to use our capacity for learning from others to its full extent, we’re shortchanging ourselves of the full human experience.” Paul L. Newby II

Between working from home, having groceries delivered, and banking online, it’s increasingly possible to conduct life without engaging face-to-face with another human being. The average person can mostly avoid conversation with strangers.

But it turns out that not talking to strangers can lead to poorer decision-making, less creativity, and diminished well-being, according to a study coauthored by Stav Atir, assistant professor of management at the Wisconsin School of Business. The study also suggests that we underestimate the potential for learning from those we casually interact with.

“Failing to accurately anticipate how much someone could teach you is consequential,” says Atir.

The study randomly paired strangers for a 10-minute conversation and compared how much they expected to learn before the conversation with how much they reported learning after the conversation. Participants consistently learned more than they expected, including understanding another’s perspective and acquiring advice or instruction on various topics.

Talking with others communicates norms, creates shared understanding, and conveys morality, among other benefits. “If we fail to use our capacity for learning from others to its full extent,” says Atir, “we’re short-changing ourselves of the full human experience.”

Boutilier hopes research like his will nudge automated external defibrillators closer to mainstream implementation. Everdrone

As a kid, Justin Boutilier would get roped into helping his dad, a paramedic and firefighter, perform automated external defibrillator (AED) demonstrations. Two decades later, Boutilier, now a UW assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering, is reimagining how AEDs can save more lives.

Boutilier has detailed the framework for designing a network of AED-outfitted, autonomous flying drones, which could allow the life-saving devices to more quickly reach people suffering cardiac arrest. In out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, survival rates drop by as much as 10 percent for each minute that passes without treatment.

“Ambulances are not fast enough for this, especially in nonurban areas, so drones are just such a good fit,” says Boutilier, whose research harnesses optimization and machine-learning techniques to improve health care quality, access, and delivery. “They’re super fast with straight-line flight. And then AEDs are a relatively light payload, so it suits the drone. The best applications for drones in health care are things that are light and where time is of the essence.”

In January, an off-duty doctor used an AED delivered by an autonomous drone to save a 71-year-old man’s life in Sweden — the first such documented successful rescue. Boutilier hopes that research like his will help nudge the technology closer toward mainstream implementation.