Joan Giangrasse Kates

Joan Krenzer and her husband were taking a tour of the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in the early 1980s when she first contemplated becoming a carillonneur. Krenzer, a...

Clara Johnson was just out of college with a degree in chemistry when she took an internship at East Alton Manufacturing Company, where she helped make explosives used during World...

Sarah Palmisano was the quiet force behind her family's Bridgeport business, one of the oldest of its kind in the city by the lake. With her late husband, Henry, she...

Melvin Waskin became interested in speculative science, or scientific thinking off the beaten path, through his work creating educational films for elementary and secondary schools. On the job, he learned...

Mary McKeown was about to graduate from the University of Chicago in the 1940s when she learned that job applications were being accepted at the nearby American School of Correspondence....

As a sculptor of recycled materials, Alfred Vorreyer found creative inspiration in junkyards across Illinois. Like the one in downstate Dowell, an old coal town that he happened upon on...