This year, UW–Madison is celebrating 175 years (and counting) of world-changing individuals and ideas. There’s so much to celebrate that we bet even well-versed Badger buffs won’t be able to name every achievement and accolade. Want to prove us wrong? Check each issue of digital Badger Insider for the rest of this milestone year to test your UW knowledge. Maybe you’ll learn something new that makes you even prouder to be part of the Badger legacy.
July 2023
Q: Psychologist Abraham Maslow ’30, MA’31, PhD’34 wrote that people have a hierarchy of needs — what shape is associated with his hierarchy?
A: Abraham Maslow ’30, MA’31, PhD’34’s hierarchy of needs is often called Maslow’s Pyramid. At its bottom are a person’s most basic requirements — food, water, air, light — and needs become more abstract as the pyramid rises: safety, belonging and love, esteem, cognitive stimulation, aesthetics, self-actualization, and transcendence.
August 2023
Q: Hey, sports fans, what structure is associated with architect David Geiger MS’60?
A: David Geiger is known for domes — especially large domed structures that use air-supported fabric roof systems. Geiger designed several domed stadiums, including the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, and the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.
September 2023
Q: This year’s Homecoming opponent is Rutgers. When was the last time Rutgers beat Wisconsin in football?
A: Never: the Badgers are 4–0 against the Scarlet Knights. Rutgers may have the oldest college football team in the country, but the two schools didn’t play each other before Rutgers joined the Big Ten in 2014. They last played in 2021, when the Badgers won 52–3. There are currently two Big Ten teams that the Badgers have never lost to: Rutgers and Maryland. Soon, there will be one Big Ten team the UW has never beaten. The Badgers are 0–4 against the Washington Huskies.
October 2023
Q: Though this author earned her BA at the UW, she’s best known for writing about the South and won the 1973 Pulitzer for The Optimist’s Daughter. Who is she?
A: Eudora Welty ’29 was born in Jackson, Mississippi, but she came to the UW to study English. After she graduated, she returned to the South and began collecting awards for her fiction — including the 1973 Pulitzer for The Optimist’s Daughter and the 1970 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
November 2023
Q: Jay Lush PhD1922 was called the “father of modern scientific animal breeding,” and he was awarded the Wolf Prize — but he didn’t study wolves. Rather, he studied pigs, cattle, goats, sheep, poultry, and what agricultural insect?
A: Among the many animals Jay Lush PhD1922 bred was the honeybee. According to the USDA, commercial honey producers in Wisconsin made 2.97 million pounds of honey in 2022, up about a million pounds from 2021.
December 2023
Q: Kate Pier LLB1887 was the first woman to do what in Fond du Lac County?
A: Kate Pier LLB1887 was the first woman to vote in Fond du Lac County. She went to law school at the UW chiefly because she didn’t want her daughter to go to Madison unaccompanied — which, if you think about it, suggests she didn’t have much confidence in at least one woman’s rights. Apparently she had a change of heart, and she spent much of the rest of her life trying to expand suffrage.
January 2024
Q: During World War II, Major Charles Woodworth PhD’30, an entomologist, commanded the Army’s fighting 33rd. What enemy did the fighting 33rd fight?
A: Major Charles Woodworth led the Army’s 33rd Mosquito Control Unit. The battle against mosquitoes was fierce and left Woodworth permanently injured — he suffered lung damage, which eventually took his life in 1966.
February 2024
Q: According to the lore of one of the firm’s founding families, UW–Madison’s Picnic Point played a key role in the 1901 establishment of what Wisconsin classic company?
A: According to the Davidson family, Harley-Davidson Motorcycles began with the help of $500 in venture capital supplied by Arthur, Walter, and William Davidson’s “honey uncle,” who owned a bee farm on Lake Mendota. That farm was part of the land that the UW eventually acquired in 1945 and is now known as Picnic Point.
March 2024
Q: After four winning seasons with the Badgers, perhaps Harold Olsen 1918’s proudest achievement was helping to create the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. What other contribution did Olsen make to the game?
A: As chair of the NCAA Basketball Committee, Olsen helped to initiate the 10-second rule in 1937. This rule requires teams to advance the ball over the center line, also called the “time line,” within 10 seconds of gaining possession of the ball.
April 2024
Q: Gaylord Nelson LLB’42 was a Wisconsin state senator, two-term governor, and U.S. senator, but he’s best known as the founder of Earth Day. Before he endeavored to save the entire planet, what was the focus of his first piece of conservation legislation?
A: The wilderness! Nelson successfully cosponsored the Wilderness Protection Act of 1964, which led to the formation of the National Wilderness Preservation System. This system encompasses 111 million acres of government-protected wilderness areas that include national forests, national parks, wildlife refuges, and Bureau of Land Management lands.
