Two Northwestern professors last week won prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships, awards that provide winners with grants of $34,000 to take a year off from teaching and continue their research.
NU’s winners were art history Professor David Van Zanten, whose research focuses on how architects shaped modern European cities in the 1840s, and chemical engineering Professor Julio Ottino, who researches dynamic reactions in granular media.
Both professors said they hope to use their time off to continue their research and write books.
This year the fellowships were granted to 183 out of 2,700 applicants. Applicants for the Guggenheim had to submit two-page summaries of their research, along with letters of recommendations from other scholars in their field.
Van Zanten and Ottino’s success made NU one of the 89 universities this year whose faculty members who won honor.
University President Henry Bienen on Thursday congratulated both Van Zanten and Ottino for their success.
“It’s always nice to have the faculty get recognition,” he said.
Van Zanten, who has taught art history at NU since 1980, said he felt “profound pleasure” when he was informed of his victory. Having previously researched how Paris was built in the 1840s, Van Zanten extended his work to include the construction of Manchester, England and Hamburg, Germany.
“Paris was built in a dramatic and quick building campaign, but the people who did it claimed they looked to England for ideas,” he said. “I found a very interesting subject in researching northern England.”
Van Zanten said he began studying Hamburg in part because a large fire burned down the city’s center in 1842. The architect who re-built the city was from Manchester, so Van Zanten wanted to research the similarities in design between the two cities.
“Hamburg became a very international city that served as a bridge between England and France,” he said.
After receiving fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1989 and 1997, Van Zanten took time off from NU to write books on Paris. This year, he said he hopes to travel to all three cities he has been researching.
“In taking next year off, I will spend time in Manchester, Hamburg and Paris to continue the research,” he said. “I’m hoping to write another book by end of the year.”
Ottino, who serves as the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical Engineering, said he will use his year off to “recharge his batteries.” Ottino has also received many other honors in his field, including election to the National Academy of Engineering.
Knowing that Guggenheim Fellows can come from any field except performing arts, Ottino said he was happy that someone in his field was honored.
“It has become extremely rare for people in science and engineering to get this award,” he said. “I’ll be taking a year off to do some long-range thinking.”
Ottino’s research showcases how complex and chaotic systems behave through highly visual models.
He has studied mixing and segregation in fluids and granular materials.
“The core of what I do involves the competition between chaos and order,” he said. “Something completely mixed can spontaneously self-organize due to some small cause.”
Chemical Engineering Chairman William Miller said the fellowship was a great honor for both Ottino and the department.
“Ottino’s work in both chaos, and now granular materials, is world-renowned,” Miller said. “The time off will be a rejuvenation period for him to continue his work, and come back even more invigorated than when he left.”
