ences, makes micro-scale plumbing circuits for pipes smaller than a human hair.
He sought a school with a top quality
chemistry department and a medical
school and/or engineering school, and in
an area strong in entrepreneurial activity.
“I realized I was an expensive package,” said Ramsey, who said he had come
from a “good salary” at Oak Ridge and
brought the credentials that command a
lot of startup lab space. The endowed professorship was a must; and the science
complex, built with public bond money
but enhanced by the gifts of private
donors, “was a big deal to me.”
Ramsey teaches graduate-level courses
and has about 18 people in his lab — professional staff, postdoc students and graduate
students, along with some undergraduates.
Part of his research involves getting the
cost of generating a mammalian genome
(the human genome cost tens of millions
of dollars) below $1,000. That would
bring science closer to being able to practically generate genomes of individuals.
The archivists
Elizabeth Hull studied archeology at
Appalachian State, and she is using it. Hull
could argue that nobody in Chapel Hill is
digging deeper than she: The life’s work of
photographer Hugh Morton ’ 43 lies in
about a half million pieces in the bowels
of Wilson Library, and Hull, on a two-year
contract funded by a donor, is doing what
Morton never did — identifying, labeling
and categorizing the pictures and preparing to make them available to the public.
She spins in her chair and points to
cartons of mysteries in every direction.
She sighs heavily at a box of hundreds of
negatives without a word to describe
them. She has set up a blog —
lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton — to tantalize
the cyber-world with what’s to come and
to beg help from those who might recognize something.
The portfolio Morton left to UNC,
documenting the state’s politics, people,
sports, tourism and its flagship university,
dates from the 1930s until just before his
death in 2006. Nobody with a camera
comes close to what he did for North
Carolina.
Morton’s photos and the new James
Joyce collection, the Andre Savine collec-
tion of rare Russian literature and the var-
ious treasures that continue to gravitate to
The libraries
received priceless
collections and –
just as important
– unrestricted
funds to get
them out
of mothballs.
