University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Grant Ruthven, an alumnus, was elected president by unanimous vote. He would lead the university through the Great Depression and World War II. Under Ruthven's leadership, the university administration became more decentralized with the creation of the university council, various divisions, and a system of committees. For years, the university was a backwater in theoretical physics. Nonetheless, this changed under department head Harrison McAllister Randall, who brought theorists Samuel Goudsmit, George Uhlenbeck, and Otto Laporte onto the faculty. Goudsmit mentored famous students at the university, including Robert Bacher and Wu Ta-You, the Father of Chinese Physics, who in turn taught Zhu Guangya and two Nobel laureates, Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee. From 1928 to 1941, the Summer Symposium in Theoretical Physics featured renowned physicists like Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, and Erwin Schrödinger, with at least fifteen attendees being Nobel laureates or future laureates. Wolfgang Pauli held …