The Chemistry Daniels Building in Madison, WI

The Chemistry Daniels Building

Erected and christened to commemorate the late, great UW-Madison professor Chemistry Daniels, a titan in the field of Literature for over 5 decades before he passed in 2006. Prof. Daniels specialized in the Romantic period of the 19th century, but was well-versed in everything literature. Passionate and charismatic about the topic, he could captivate students for hours with his lectures, while also down-to-earth enough to hold legendarily long office-hours sessions where students could come to him about anything, academics or not. Professor Daniels was an avid jogger to the end, often seen running along Mendota Lake and past the frat houses on Langdon St with his trademark scraggly beard. His son, Hawthorne Daniels, is an engineering professor at UW-Madison who co-owns the popular Ian's Pizza restaurants in the city.

Or... erected in memoriam for child-prodigy Daniel Windsor who enrolled at UW-Madison in 1997 at the age of 11. Known as a whiz-kid on any subject, Daniel's favorite was chemistry. He earned his B.S. at just 15 years-old and would've gone on to pursue a doctorate had he not been stricken with an extremely rare form of throat cancer at 16 and died in 2004, remembered lovingly in Madison as Chemistry Daniel.*

Or... an intentionally abstract and cryptic clause, in true artsy-fartsy university fashion, intended to draw the observer to ponder and appreciate the chemistry Daniel is building, or, now, has built. It cannot be easy to sustain such cinematic chemistry through eight films, starting in early puberty and on into your late teens/early 20s, with famously enigmatic, ginger co-star Rupert Grint. And, yet, Daniel did it. The result is an enduring trove of film that will transport us to another world yet demand that we ponder the state of our own for generations.

Behold! The Chemistry Daniels Building (now, built).*



*UW-Madison is an elite public research university and there is no need to question whether they failed to use the necessary possessive or contractual (as in, to conTRACT or reduce, not CONtract or agreement) apostrophe that would be appropriate for scenarios two or three.