WN@TL - Harry Steenbock and the Patenting of University Science. Kevin Walters. 2019.03.20

This week (March 20) we get a new view of one of the oldest legends at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as historian Kevin Walters of WARF digs deep into the professional life and times of Harry Steenbock, a pivotal personality in the story-arc of intellectual property, licensing & royalties for inventions created at a US university.

Here’s how Kevin describes his talk, entitled “Before the Foundation: Harry Steenbock and the Patenting of University Science, 1886-1925”:

A syndicated story, printed in newspapers across the country in March 1940, placed the record-setting winnings of Seabiscuit, the plucky, inspirational racehorse of the Depression Era, within the context of four other famous careers. The horse had earned more than President Roosevelt, and more than Babe Ruth, but still not as much as a movie star like Greta Garbo.

To make the story more relatable to the reader, the comparison also included “Dr. Harry Steenbock” described as “a professor at Wisconsin” who “saved millions of children from the crippling effects of rickets by developing [a] process for introducing vitamin D into foods” but had “refused a million dollars for his process.” The humble professor’s salary, over the course of his entire career, earned him about half of what Seabiscuit had won in just five years.

But the papers got it wrong. In truth, royalties from the vitamin D process had outpaced Seabiscuit by 1940 and, before long, Steenbock would have a net worth larger than the one estimated for Garbo. The wealthier he became from his science, the more he was celebrated for turning down a fortune for the sake of science.

This lecture will explain the seeming paradox of Steenbock’s fame and fortune as well as what it can tell us about the history of vitamins, science, and the university.


About the Speaker


Kevin Walters is a historian of university technology transfer. He currently works as a Strategic Research Coordinator in the Communications Department at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), where he has served in various capacities as a historian and archivist since the summer of 2011.

Kevin earned a doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018 with a dissertation on WARF founder Harry Steenbock. Prior to arriving in Madison, he spent seven years as an operations analyst at GE Capital while completing an MA in Humanities and an MA in History from the University of Texas at Dallas. He also holds a BA in History and Humanities from the University of Texas at Austin. While raised in Texas, he’s now happy to call Madison home.