Platzman Memorial Fellowships

The Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships, established by bequest of George W. Platzman (1920-2008), Professor Emeritus in Geophysical Sciences at the University, are named in memory of George’s brother Robert Platzman (1918-1973), who was Professor of Chemistry and Physics and worked at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago in the 1940s.

The program provides up to $3,500 for visiting researchers working on projects that require on-site consultation of University of Chicago Library collections, primarily archives, manuscripts or printed materials in the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center. The funds can be used for travel, living and research expenses. Support for beginning scholars is a priority of the program, as are projects that cannot be conducted without onsite access to the original materials and where University of Chicago collections are central to the research. Special consideration will be given to applications in the fields of late 19th or early 20th-century physics or physical chemistry, or 19th-century classical opera.

The announcement of availability of each year's Platzman Fellowships is made in November, with a deadline for submission in February. Platzman Fellowship funds may be used for visits to the University of Chicago Library during June-September of the award year.

Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships have been awarded 166 visiting scholars since the program began in 2006. For further information on fellows and projects from previous years, please consult the listing of Platzman Memorial Fellowship recipients, 2006-2020.

2022 Platzman Fellowship Recipients

The University of Chicago Library is pleased to announce the recipients of Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships for 2022. A list of the 2022 Fellows appears below along with their academic affiliations and research topics.

James Phillip Ascher

Doctoral candidate, University of Virginia

Reading for Enlightenment in the Beginning of Philosophical Transactions

Lorenzo Bartolucci

Doctoral candidate, Stanford University

The Neurological Imagination: Neuroscience and the Self in Twentieth-Century Poetry

Isaiah Bertagnolli

Doctoral candidate, University of Pittsburgh

Radioactive Landscapes of the Cold War Pacific

Merve Fejzula

Assistant Professor, University of Missouri

Negritude and the Black Public Sphere, 1947-77

Robert Hancock

Assistant Professor, University of Victoria, British Columbia

The influence of Action Anthropology on the Emergence of Indigenous Studies as a Discipline

Reginald Jayne

Associate Professor, Boise State University

Mortimer Adler, a Biography, 1902-1952

Michelle Johnson

Doctoral candidate, Yale University

Wagons and Warehouses: Civil Rights Organizing in Chicago, 1942-1966

Thomas Kohlwein

Independent scholar, Vienna, Austria

How to Build a University Library

Alexander Langstaff

Doctoral candidate, New York University

Czechoslovak Institute of Public Opinion

Julia Menzel

Doctoral candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Enigmatic Nature: A Critical History of Theoretical Physics, 1967-2004

Keely Mruk

Doctoral candidate, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Radiobiology research in the United States during the middle decades of the 20th century

Neel Thakkar

Doctoral candidate, Princeton University

Crucible of Development: 20th Century Economic, Social, and Spatial Transformations in the Chota Nagpur Plateau Region

Katherine Williams

Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

A Looking Glasse for London and England