Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

September-October 2007

Download a PDF

Letters

FAITH AND UNBELIEF I am surprised that Katherine Dunn (“Faculty Faith,” July-August, page 15) does not refer to the main...

The College Pump

"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by." Betty Vorenberg recalls stumbling over a “Harvard...

Treasure

The world’s first magazine devoted to science fiction, Amazing Stories, was born in 1926, a year before Frederick I. Ordway III...

In this Issue

Borneo, early morning. Most of the trees are dipterocarps, but in the foreground is Koompassia excelsa, a favorite nesting spot of the giant honey bee.

Photograph by Louise Murray/Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis

Peter Shaw Ashton stepped into his first Asian tropical forest 50 years ago last March. For what he has accomplished in those steamy reaches, he...

Illustration by Joseph Ciadiello

The first and perhaps the most important requirement for a successful writing performance—and writing is a performance, like singing an...

Portrait of Gordon McKay in 1895 by Hubert von Herkomer

Courtesy of Imaging Department, Harvard University Art Museums ©President and Fellows of Harvard College.

One day in 1858, Gordon McKay paid cobbler Lyman Blake $70,000, mostly in promises, for the patent on a machine Blake had devised to stitch the...

This elegant and austere office building for the Harvard University Library rose at 90 Mount Auburn Street after the Cambridge Historical Commission rejected a design by Viennese architect Hans Hollein that would have been a bold, provocative piece of art that might have begun “a new kind of architecture in Harvard Square.”

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Every year, on a hot summer day, 10 Boston-area architects pile into a van together and drive around for hours looking for beauty. Lately, at...

Letters

FAITH AND UNBELIEF I am surprised that Katherine Dunn (“Faculty Faith,” July-August, page 15) does not refer to the main...

Right Now

Illustration by Tom Mosser

Many women fantasize about it: a male birth-control pill. After all, most existing contraceptives place sole responsibility for preventing...

Resources should be targeted to programs that benefit society the most, argues political economist Richard Zeckhauser.

Chart by Stephen Anderson

The idea seems simple enough: Get detailed information about the participants in a given social program—public-housing residents, say, or...

Illustration by Keith A. Negley

Public debates about evolution frequently pit science against religion. But work by professor of mathematics and of biology Martin Nowak adds a...

Dangerous work can lead to new definitions of masculinity.

Photograph by Steve Chenn/Corbis

As a professor at Harvard Business School, Robin J. Ely has had her share of experience with how men (who constitute 80 percent of the...

New England Regional

The celebrated Glass House would startle pious Puritans and Newport nabobs alike.

Photograph by Eirik Johnson /the Glass House

More than 500 people turned out in June for the inaugural gala picnic at Philip Johnson’s Glass House, in New Canaan, Connecticut. The...

Harvard Square offers something for everyone this fall: saunter down to the Charles River and join an ad hoc community choir as they light up...

The following text is a sidebar to "Modern and Historic," September-October 2007. The Gropius House Lincoln, Massachusetts...

The following text is a sidebar to "Modern and Historic," September-October 2007. The Frelinghuysen Morris House Lenox, Massachusetts...

The following text is a sidebar to "Modern and Historic," September-October 2007. The Glass House New Canaan, Connecticut...

The following text is a sidebar to "Modern and Historic," September-October 2007. The Zimmerman House Manchester, New Hampshire www.currier.org ...

The following text is a sidebar to "Modern and Historic," September-October 2007. Field Farm and The Folly Williamstown, Massachusetts...

The kitchen at Ten Tables is like none we’ve ever seen. Red-faced cooks don’t swear, or growl “Plate this!” at scuttling...

John Harvard's Journal

Photograph by Kris Snibbe / Harvard News Office

Photograph by Kris Snibbe / Harvard News Office To accommodate Harvard Law School’s large new building, an existing garage and...

On Monday morning, July 2, those members of the Harvard community who weren’t taking a pre-holiday vacation were greeted by an e-mailed...

Jeffrey S. Flier, M.D., becomes dean of Harvard Medical School (HMS) on September 1; President Drew Faust announced his appointment on July 11...

Photograph by Stu Rosner Howard Gardner As a psychologist, Howard Gardner is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, first...

Photograph by Jim Harrison Byerly Hall is known to tens of thousands of would-be Harvard College students as the home of undergraduate...

Harvard’s anomalous academic calendar will more closely resemble those of other institutions—starting just after Labor Day and...

Celebrating its own nifty bit of reengineering, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), elevated from the status of a division of...

Enduring Deans, Acting Executives Kris Snibbe / Harvard News Office Alan A. Altshuler Alan A. Altshuler, Harvard Graduate School of Design...

1912 Larz Anderson ’88 proposes to build a new bridge across the Charles River to replace the inadequate wooden structure connecting...

The $50-million challenge fund established by the University Development Office in February 2006 to stimulate the endowment of professorships...

The Arnold Arboretum anticipated closing a deal last December to sell the Case Estates, its 62.5-acre property (complete with barn and two other...

College Chief Concludes Service Harvard College dean Benedict H. Gross, Leverett professor of mathematics, left his decanal post on August 31...

Though I have two years left before I bid farewell to Harvard, I stayed through Commencement this past June to write for the Crimson and...

Photograph by Jim Harrison Liz Goodwin and Samuel Bjork Harvard Magazine’s Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellows for the...

Deep into the second half of the NCAA soccer playoff game against SUNY Binghamton last fall, with the score tied 1-1, Harvard forward...

I was a hooker at Harvard. It wasn’t what I expected from college, but I fell in with a crowd of foul-mouthed girls who spent Saturdays...

Women’s Soccer New head coach Ray Leone, who came to Harvard from Arizona State, leads the women booters into their fall season; he is the...

Montage

Virginia Heffernan in her home with a few tools of her trade: notebook computer, flat-screen television, DVDs, remote control

Photograph by Robert Adam Mayer

Not long ago, Virginia Heffernan, Ph.D. ’02, who writes about television and on-line media for the New York Times, got an e-mail from her...

In Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Harvard University Press, $27.95), Jeremi Suri examines why Henry Kissinger ’50, Ph.D...

Lincoln Kirstein ’30 combined a ferocious intelligence with manic energy, a belief that there was nothing he could not do, and a...

“Playing chamber music for a white, affluent audience that is experienced in this kind of music doesn’t light my fire nearly as much...

At age 36, Kevin Young ’92 ranks among the most accomplished poets of his generation. The recipient of Guggenheim, Stegner, and NEA...

Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life, edited by Louise M. Antony, Ph.D. ’82 (Oxford...

Kenneth Kronenberg seeks the definitive source for “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a...

Alumni

Kenneth Mehlman

Photograph by Brooks Kraft/Corbis

Editor’s note: More people than ever before seem to be seeking the U.S. presidency. Rather than profile alumni who are running for...

As a new presidential administration moves into Massachusetts Hall, the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) is also taking on challenges under its...

Matthew Drazba ’08, of Kirkland House, and Ana Vollmar ’08, of Dudley House, are this year’s David Aloian Memorial Scholars...

Video stills ©President and Fellows Harvard College ”Justice,” from Sanders Theatre to you: Sandel and engaged students...

Six alumni are to receive this year’s Hiram S. Hunn Memorial Schools and Scholarships Awards, presented by the Harvard College Office of...

The Harvard Alumni Association offers numerous opportunities for alumni to stay in touch with their alma mater. Among them are a series of...

The Harvard Club of Serbia celebrated the country’s new government—which includes President Boris Tadic, a participant in a Kennedy...

When asked what inspired her to create The Young Scientists Club series of do-them-at-home science kits, Esther Novis ’87, A.L.M...

“They’re very special birds, but they could go extinct in the flash of an eye,” says Gus Bodner ’89 of the native...

Erin Sprague ’05 has one goal: to run seven marathons, on seven continents, and raise money for seven charities. And in the process, she...

During the class of 1972’s thirty-fifth reunion in June, about 80 people showed up for a talk and animated discussion spurred by this...

The College Pump

"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by." Betty Vorenberg recalls stumbling over a “Harvard...

Treasure

The world’s first magazine devoted to science fiction, Amazing Stories, was born in 1926, a year before Frederick I. Ordway III...