Snapshot of 150 years

1896 — The first off-campus agronomy field research site was established in Effingham County. It studied the effects of green manures and soil treatments on light colored, acid soils.

1900 — The trustees establish a department of domestic science in the College of Agriculture. Professor Isabel Bevier became a nationally influential academic figure in the field of home economics.

1910 — Herbert Mumford publishes the nation’s first research on marketing an agricultural product and begins research on the management and organization of farming, leading to the Department of Agricultural Economics.

1952 — Physics Professor Ralph E. Meagher and colleagues developed ILLIAC I, the first digital computer entirely built and owned by an educational institution. It measured 10 feet high, 2 feet wide and 8.5 feet tall.

1960 — Illinois builds one of the first agricultural universities in India, G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in Pantnagar, an institution important in the history of the “Green Revolution.”

1989 — A groundbreaking animation of a thunderstorm created by Professor Robert Wilhelmson, an atmospheric scientist and pioneer in the use of computer graphics to simulate severe storms, receives 14 awards, including an Academy Award nomination. He also advances storm prediction.

1993 — The National Soybean Research Laboratory (NSRL) is established to allow researchers to respond directly to opportunities and challenges in the soybean market.

2004 — The Department of Animal Sciences dedicates a new beef research facility, equipped with an innovative $2-million waste handling system at the South Campus in Urbana.

2007 — The Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), the largest public-private institute of its kind, is created to address problems associated with climate change, global warming, and the rising price and diminishing supplies of carbon-based fossil fuels.

2017 — The public land grant university celebrates its sesquicentennial in Illinois.