The person behind the building

Editor’s note: The following series provides the history behind the naming of UW–Madison’s buildings.

In 1919, an experiment proved that an animal exposed to ultraviolet light could be cured of rickets.

Professor Harry Steenbock took this one step further when he irradiated a hog’s millet in his UW–Madison lab and discovered that the food enriched the vitamin D content.

His discovery earned him the title of “the trapper of the sun.” Now radiation could maintain its health benefits any time, anywhere. Steenbock’s discovery virtually eliminated rickets and vitamin D deficiency as public health concerns.

Steenbock approached the Board of Regents and asked them to fund his patent, but they weren’t interested. So he took matters into his own hands and secured the patent with his own money.

Despite the friction between Steenbock and the regents, he decided that any profits would go to better use at the university than in his own pockets. He even turned down an offer from Quaker Oats Company that would have put millions into his bank account.

He envisioned a patent management agency that would regulate UW–Madison faculty patents and pump profits back into the university to fund research.

With a little help from Deans Harry L. Russell and Charles Slichter, plans for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) were approved in 1925. Steenbock turned over his patents to the foundation. The patents brought in about $14 million before they expired and eventually led to the vitamin D fortification of fluid milk.

The Steenbock Memorial Library opened in 1969, a little more than a year after Steenbock died at age 81. The agriculture library was funded largely by WARF, and therefore it was only appropriate it carry Steenbock’s name both for his role in founding WARF and his contributions to the field of agriculture.