Thomas J. Burrill and John Bardeen never met.  From two different centuries, they contributed to campus in very different ways.  Their legacies, however, intersect on the engineering quad.

On December 11, 1895, the Board of Trustees passed a resolution to name the carriage drive extending south from Military Hall (now Kenney Gym) in honor of Thomas J. Burrill.  A respected professor of horticulture and botany since the university doors opened nearly three decades earlier, Burrill had also served as regent pro tem and dean of the general faculty.

The Committee on Buildings and Grounds submitted the resolution, which stated in part:

Burrill Avenue changed dramatically over the years.  The tree-lined carriage path was bricked and then paved as carriages gave way to automobiles.  Eventually, the trees gave way to metered parking spaces.  By the 1960s, little remained of the picturesque drive. 

Today, however, Burrill Avenue is a pedestrian boulevard more reminiscent of the spirit of the 1895 resolution.  Trees are back in the landscape, and plans are in place to convert some of the adjacent ground to a garden that Burrill would likely have approved.

In the coming months, work will begin on a quad and memorial garden to honor another distinguished faculty member, John Bardeen.   An electrical engineering and physics professor from 1951 until his death in 1991, Bardeen was a two-time Nobel Prize winner and one of the 20th century's greatest minds.  The Bardeen Quad is bounded by the Grainger Library on the north, the Mechanical Engineering Lab on the east, Engineering Hall on the south, and Talbot Lab on the west.

Bardeen's first Nobel Prize, 1956, was for research that led to the development of the transistor.  That work was carried out at Bell Laboratories with two other scientists.  His second Nobel Prize, 1972, was for his role in developing the theory of superconductivity.  This work was performed at the U of I, along with colleagues Leon Cooper and J. R. Schrieffer.

The memorial quad and garden, a gift from The Grainger Foundation Inc., will ensure that Bardeen's contributions to science and this campus are not forgotten. 

—Tina M. Prow