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March-April 2010

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Letters

Letters from our readers

The College Pump

Notes on a forty-fifth-reunion report, and a telescope trespasser

Treasure

A professor's passion reveals how one learned to dance in Jane Austen's day.

In this Issue

Professor Dyann Wirth leads the Harvard Malaria Initiative.

Harvard scientists are using genomic tools to fight newly resurgent malaria.

Old Beijing and new: traditional homes and encroaching high-rises

A Harvard Magazine roundtable

Late at night, Harvard Crimson staffers put to bed the last issue before winter break.

College students today lead hyper-active, highly scheduled lives.

Johnny Green, with his trademark white carnation and some of his musical works

Brief life of a conflicted musician: 1908-1989

Letters

Letters from our readers

Right Now

The complexity of nations’ economies changes over time. César Hidalgo used network science to graph the phenomenon, as shown below for 99 nations between the years 1963 and 2005.

The most prosperous countries have economies that produce a variety of goods.

Inflicting pain changes the perceptions of torturers, not necessarily their knowledge.

Daniel Gilbert

Other people’s experience is a more accurate guide than your own imagination to what you will like.

Wavelength scale grating (above) on the facet of a tiny semiconductor laser (below) creates multiple laser beams parallel to the original.

Harvard researchers have developed multibeam, multiwavelength miniature lasers.

New England Regional

While cycling the East Coast Greenway, Linda Cabot Black and Elizabeth Brody pause for some Florida sunshine.

Harvard alumni work to make a 3,000-mile greenway along the Eastern seaboard a reality.

Enjoy stretches from Boston to Portland, Providence to Worcester, and New Haven to Northampton.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Jamar Roberts in Judith Jamison’s <i>Among Us (Private Spaces: Public Places)</i>; Jamison speaks at Radcliffe on April 27.

Spring events at Harvard

A sampler of five, from more than a dozen, pâtés

Sofra Bakery and Café specializes in small items with an Eastern Mediterranean accent.

John Harvard's Journal

Construction of the Allston science complex will halt. The Charlesview housing site, across Western Avenue (to the right), will come under Harvard’s control—but development of a proposed arts and cultural hub at this key intersection with North Harvard Street remains a vision for the future.

With construction on its huge science facility in Allston halted, Harvard reconsiders its planned expansion there.

Midwinter work, under wraps, on the Law School’s Northwest Corner building

Construction continues at the Law School and begins at the Fogg Art Museum.

Emma Dench

Meet a scholar enthralled by the Romans.

Headlines from Harvard history

James R. Houghton

James R. Houghton, senior fellow of Harvard’s senior governing board, will step down on June 30.

Lino Pertile

Short takes on recent Harvard news

…but more hard work remains to be done.

Boosting faculty-student ties

A badminton rally in progress at the Malkin Athletic Center.

Chasing a bird that flies indoors at 200 miles per hour

An update on the basketball and swim teams

Harvard at Army, 1948: The Black Knights won, 20-7. The ball carrier is Chuck Roche ’50.

A new DVD pays tribute to the “Old Timers,” players from the 1946 through 1950 teams.

Montage

For Molière’s <i>The Misanthrope</i> at Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Sprague’s sketch (shown) became a model later built as the play’s set.

Carl Sprague ’84 designs sets for local theater companies and Hollywood movies.

A reserved Alexis de Tocqueville, portrayed when he was in his thirties—some years after his momentous American travels.

An excerpt from Tocqueville's Discovery of America, by Leo Damrosch

McBean’s favorite model—and muse—was Vivien Leigh (1913-1967), here photographed for a 1951 production of George Bernard Shaw’s <i>Caesar and Cleopatra.</i>

Fredric Wilson’s book The Theatrical World of Angus McBean collects British midcentury theater images.

Producer Mynette Louie on the set of her film <i>Children of Invention</i>

Film producer Mynette Louie ’97 on films, audiences, and the quest to connect them.

Adam Kirsch review Maurice Charney’s Wrinkled Deep in Time: Aging in Shakespeare.

Recent books with Harvard connections

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Alumni

Steven Crist

Steven Crist '78 is a newspaperman for the turf tribe.

This year's candidates for Overseer and Harvard Alumni Association elected director have been chosen.

The Harvard Alumni Association sponsors a global public-service initiative.

The winners of the 2010 HAA Clubs and SIGs Committee honors

An April invitation for all College alumni and alumnae, their spouses, and their high-school-age children

A sampling of spring speakers at Harvard clubs around the country

News from Shared Interest Groups

The College Pump

Notes on a forty-fifth-reunion report, and a telescope trespasser

Treasure

A professor's passion reveals how one learned to dance in Jane Austen's day.