Someone mentioned that Chicago was where the Human Ecology movement started.
The University of Chicago is arguably among the most imfluential in the world. Only Cambridge has been home to more Nobel Prize winners
more on the UC
The University of Chicago is one of the foremost research universities in the world. Barely a century old, the departments of Physics, Economics, Sociology, Linguistics, Political Science (Committee on Social Thought), International Studies (Committee on International Relations) as well as the schools of Jurisprudence and Business are considered among the best in the country. Scholars affiliated with the University have obtained a total of seventy-five Nobel Prizes
The school's more important contributions to science include Robert Millikan's 1909 Oil-drop experiment, which determined the charge of the electron; the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, carried out by Enrico Fermi and his colleagues as part of the Manhattan Project on December 2, 1942; and the Miller-Urey experiment in 1953, considered to be the classic experiment on the origin of life.
The school is also known for its important contributions to modern sociology, economics, international relations, archaeology, philosophy, literary criticism, archeology, and paleontology. In many of these areas there developed in the latter half of the 20th century the "Chicago School of . . ." -- where many members of a department adopted a consistent and often radical approach to the study of each of these subjects. One of the great influences over many of the Chicago Schools was the neo-Aristotelian philosopher, Richard McKeon, whose intellectual rigor, in the context of the collegial atmosphere of the University that encouraged cross-departmental discussions, engendered a fresh look at the study of these subjects.
The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the country and publishes The Chicago Manual of Style, the definitive guide to American English usage. The University also operates a number of off-campus scientific research institutions, the best known of which is probably Fermilab, or the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, managed by the University of Chicago for the U.S. Department of Energy. The University also operates the Argonne National Laboratory, owns and operates Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, the Oriental Institute, and has a stake in Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico. The University is also a founding member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.
Some notable alumni of the University of Chicago
* Saul Alinsky, Community Organizer
* John Ashcroft, United States Attorney General
* Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Life President of Malawi from 1971-1994
* Saul Bellow, Author
* Allan Bloom, Philosopher
* Robert Bork, Judge, United States Supreme Court Nominee
* Sophonisba Breckinridge, Feminist
* Herbert C. Brown, Nobel laureate in Chemistry in 1979
* Ahmed Chalabi, Leader, Iraqi National Congress
* Isadore Singer (PhD), Mathematician
* David Suzuki (PhD), Ecologist and host of The Nature of Things
* Frank H. Easterbrook, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
* Carol Moseley-Braun, First female African-American United States Senator, 2004 Presidential Candidate
* Milton Friedman, Economist
* Philip Glass, Composer
* Katherine Graham, Publisher, Washington Post
* Friedrich Hayek, Political theorist
* Seymour Hersh, Journalist
* Stephen Leacock, Humorist and economist
* Patsy Mink, Representative (D-HI), United States House of Representatives
* Richard Rorty, Philosopher
* Philip Roth, Author
* F. Sherwood Rowland, Nobel laureate in Chemistry
* Carl Sagan (AB, PhD), Astronomer, creator of , 1977 Pulitzer Prize winning author
* Paul Samuelson (BA, 1935), Nobel laureate (Economics, 1970)
* Edwin Hubble (AB, PhD), Astronomer
* John Paul Stevens, United States Supreme Court Justice
* Leo Strauss, Philosopher
* Susan Sontag, Author
* Mark Strand, Poet
* Kurt Vonnegut, Author
* James D. Watson, ''Biologist, co-discoverer of DNA, Nobel laureate (Physiology or Medicine, 1972)
* Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy United States Secretary of Defense
* Indiana Jones, Archaeologist
* more professors than you can shake a stick at