The Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) was established in 1951 as a small-scale, military-funded initiative to advance American efforts in the Korean War. But CSL long outlived that conflict—and in time became one of the world’s premier multidisciplinary research laboratories.

Published in honor of CSL’s seventy-fifth anniversary, this book reveals how the institution evolved into a rich research ecosystem that pursues a wide range of diverse projects. CSL’s work to date has given rise to dozens of startups, thousands of careers, and countless innovations in communications, robotics, computing, and other areas of science and technology. As the stories in this book show, CSL brings together diverse minds from across disciplines to solve some of the world’s most complex challenges. Indeed, the institution’s history is interwoven with the histories of industry, national security, and the familiar everyday technologies that connect and empower our world.

"Permit me to say that I have won Hopwoods and also lost them, and I know the power that winning gives and the way the soul shakes when, all ears, you hear silence instead of your name."
-Arthur Miller

The Hopwood Awards claim a gallery of prizewinners who rose to become the Who's Who of writers of the last three generations: Max Apple, John Ciardi, Mary Gaitskill, Robert Hayden, Laura Kasischke, Jane Kenyon, Arthur Miller, Howard Moss, Frank O'Hara, Marge Piercy, Ronald Wallace, and Nancy Willard, among many others.

Since they first began in 1931, funded by a bequest from the will of playwright Avery Hopwood, University of Michigan Class of 1905, the Hopwood Awards have grown in profile and stature to become one of the most sought after and celebrated writing prizes for students.

The Hopwood Awards: 75 Years of Prized Writing collects-for the first time in one volume-poetry and prose by writers who won Hopwood Awards when they were students at the University of Michigan and who went on to achieve fame as writers.

Nicholas Delbanco is Professor of English and Director of the Hopwood Program at the University of Michigan. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Anywhere Out of the World: Essays on Travel, Writing, Death;The Sincerest Form; and The Writing Life: The Hopwood Lectures.

Andrea Beauchamp is Program Associate at the Hopwood Program, and Michael Barrett is Associate Editor at the Hopwood Program, University of Michigan.