Case Western Reserve University
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40 free Case Western Reserve University trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Case Western Reserve University is two schools in one. Western Reserve College opened in 1826 on the Ohio frontier, the Case School of Applied Science followed in 1880, and the two neighbors on Cleveland's University Circle joined forces in 1967. Between them they have a long list of scientific firsts and a surprising number of household names. This quiz covers the whole story: the founders and benefactors, a physics experiment that changed how we understand light, breakthroughs in surgery and technology, and graduates who went on to Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Congress and the NFL. There are questions on campus buildings, student traditions and varsity sports too. It is written for students, alumni, staff and anyone in Northeast Ohio who wants to test what they know about CWRU. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few stories worth retelling at homecoming.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Case graduate M. Frank Rudy, an aeronautical engineer, invented which shoe brand's air sole?
Nike
Nike first used his cushioning in the 1978 Air Tailwind, and every Case Western Reserve varsity team wears a patch on its uniform in his honor.
Q 02Case Western Reserve alumni Anthony and Joe Russo directed which 2019 superhero blockbuster?
Avengers: Endgame
Avengers: Endgame briefly became the highest-grossing film of all time; the brothers had paid for their first feature with student loans and credit cards.
Q 03Which website began in 1995 as a Case Western Reserve graduate's emails to friends?
Craigslist
Craigslist grew out of Craig Newmark's messages about San Francisco events; he had earned bachelor's and master's degrees at Case Western Reserve in the 1970s.
Q 04Which physicist visited the Case campus in 1921 during his first trip to the United States?
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein came out of respect for the physics done at Case, and sat down with professor Dayton Miller to discuss his research.
Q 05Case Western Reserve graduate Paul Buchheit created which Google service, launched on April 1, 2004?
Gmail
Gmail launched with one gigabyte of storage, far more than rivals offered; Buchheit had begun building it at Google in 2001.
Q 06Case president T. Keith Glennan became the first head of which federal agency in 1958?
NASA
NASA kept Glennan until January 1961; he then went back to running Case and helped negotiate its merger with Western Reserve.
Q 07Which abolitionist, later hanged in Virginia, was the son of a Western Reserve College founder?
John Brown
John Brown's father Owen sheltered fugitives on the Underground Railroad and secured the site for the college; John led the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859.
Q 08Steve Belichick, father of coach Bill, scored as Western Reserve won which 1941 postseason game?
Sun Bowl
The Sun Bowl was the Red Cats' first bowl game, and they beat Arizona State Teachers College 26-13 after trailing at halftime.
Q 09Fred Gray, a 1954 Case Western Reserve law graduate, soon defended which civil rights figure?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was among his first clients, after 15-year-old Claudette Colvin; Gray later sued on behalf of the men in the Tuskegee syphilis study.
Q 10Frank Ryan, quarterback of the 1964 champion Cleveland Browns, taught which subject at Case?
Mathematics
Mathematics was Ryan's other career: he earned his doctorate in 1965 and joined the Case faculty in February 1967 while still on the Browns roster.
Q 11Which Case physicist, who measured light's speed, was the first American to win a science Nobel?
Albert Michelson
Albert Michelson, who started the physics departments at both Case and the University of Chicago, won the physics prize in 1907.
Q 12What invisible medium did an 1887 experiment in a Western Reserve basement famously fail to find?
The ether
The ether was thought to carry light waves through space; finding no trace of it helped clear the ground for special relativity.
Q 13Case physicist Dayton Miller began experimenting in early 1896 with which newly discovered radiation?
X-rays
X-rays had been found by Wilhelm Röntgen only the year before, and Miller soon used them to reveal a bullet lodged in a man's limb.
Q 21Which architect designed Case Western Reserve's Peter B. Lewis Building, completed in 2002?
Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry finished the five-story management school five years after his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened; Lewis gave $36.9 million toward its construction.
Q 22Peter B. Lewis, namesake of a Case Western Reserve landmark, chaired which auto insurer?
Progressive
Progressive was co-founded by his father in 1937; Lewis and his mother took control in a 1965 leveraged buyout and he built it into a national giant.
Q 23Case Western Reserve's Film Society has held a nonstop marathon of which movie genre since 1976?
Science fiction
Q 14The 'Western Reserve' in Case Western Reserve was Ohio land once claimed by which colony?
Connecticut
Connecticut kept a strip of northeast Ohio south of Lake Erie after ceding its other western claims, then sold much of it to land speculators.
Q 15Western Reserve College copied its motto, curriculum and campus design from which Ivy League school?
Yale
Yale was copied so closely, down to the entrance standards, that the frontier college was nicknamed the Yale of the West.
Q 16Which Ohio town did Western Reserve College leave in 1882, a move still marked by a student relay?
Hudson
Hudson gives its name to the 26-mile Hudson Relay; a class that wins all four years earns a champagne and steak dinner with the university president.
Q 17Which orator, born into slavery, gave Western Reserve College's commencement address in 1854?
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass spoke at the first college west of the Appalachians to enroll and graduate a Black student, John Sykes Fayette, in the 1830s.
Q 18What nickname did Case Western Reserve teams adopt in 1970, replacing the Red Cats and Rough Riders?
Spartans
Spartans became the shared name three years after the merger; Western Reserve had been the Red Cats since 1928 and Case the Rough Riders since 1940.
Q 19Which fellow University Athletic Association founder is Case Western Reserve's primary sports rival?
Carnegie Mellon
Carnegie Mellon names Case Western Reserve as a primary rival in return; both Pittsburgh's Tartans and the Cleveland school joined the conference at its founding in 1986.
Q 20Which vice president debated John Edwards at Case Western Reserve's Veale Center in 2004?
Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney and Edwards met there in the only vice presidential debate of 2004; the university later hosted the first presidential debate of 2020.
Science fiction features, cartoons, trailers and shorts run for more than 34 hours at a student-run event billed as the oldest festival of its type.
Q 24Case doctoral graduate Robert Kearns sued Ford and Chrysler over which car feature he invented?
Intermittent wipers
Intermittent wipers were modeled on the blinking of the human eye; Kearns argued much of his Chrysler case himself, and the 2008 film Flash of Genius retold his fight.
Q 25George Crile, a Western Reserve surgeon, pioneered which donor-to-patient procedure in the 1900s?
Blood transfusion
Blood transfusion directly from one person to another first succeeded in Crile's hands; he went on to help start the Cleveland Clinic in 1921.
Q 26Western Reserve surgeon Claude Beck saved a boy in 1947 with the first successful use of what?
A defibrillator
A defibrillator that Beck had designed himself did the job after about 45 minutes of massaging the boy's heart by hand had failed.
Q 27John Macleod, who taught at Western Reserve for 15 years, shared a 1923 Nobel for which discovery?
Insulin
Insulin was isolated in Macleod's laboratory at the University of Toronto, and he shared the medicine prize with Frederick Banting.
Q 28Case graduate Paul Lauterbur shared a 2003 Nobel Prize for work behind which imaging method?
MRI scans
MRI scans became possible through research Lauterbur carried out at Stony Brook in the 1970s; he shared the medicine prize with Peter Mansfield.
Q 29Which industrial giant was founded by a Case graduate who extracted bromine from brine?
Dow Chemical
Dow Chemical was formed in Midland, Michigan, after Herbert Dow's first backers fired him for spending too much time on research.
Q 30Which Case Western Reserve graduate won the 2017 economics Nobel and co-wrote 'Nudge'?
Richard Thaler
Richard Thaler earned his bachelor's degree in 1967, the year of the merger, and joked that he would spend the prize money as irrationally as possible.