John D. Rockefeller's money founded the University of Chicago in 1890, an investment he later called the best he ever made, and you are on its campus now. The university rose fast into a powerhouse of ideas; its faculty and graduates have won more Nobel Prizes than almost any institution on Earth. Beneath the football stands of old Stagg Field, on December 2, 1942, a team led by Enrico Fermi achieved the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, the dawn of the atomic age, now marked by a brooding Henry Moore sculpture nearby.
Before you stands Rockefeller Chapel, completed in 1928 in soaring Gothic stone, the tallest building on campus by the founder's own decree. Notice its limestone tower rising, then the ivy-covered quadrangles built to feel centuries old in a city barely fifty years past the fire.