The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal, first awarded in 1989 on the occasion of the school’s hundredth anniversary, honors alumni who have made contributions to society that emerged from their graduate study at Harvard. It is the highest honor the Graduate School bestows, and awardees include some of Harvard’s most accomplished alumni. The 2011 recipients, announced at a ceremony on May 25, are: Heisuke Hironaka, Ph.D. ’60, Fields Medal-winning mathematician and popular author of 26 books on science, mathematics, education, and creativity; space-walking astrophysicist Jeffrey Alan Hoffman, Ph.D. ’71, professor of the practice of aerospace engineering at MIT; historian and former Stanford president Richard Wall Lyman, Ph.D. ’54, now Stanford’s Sterling professor of humanities emeritus; and scholar of U.S. history Nell Irvin Painter, Ph.D. ’74, Edwards professor of history emerita at Princeton.
Graduate School Medalists

You might also like
Centralizing University Discipline
Harvard establishes new disciplinary procedures for campus protest violations.
Five Questions with JoAnn Manson
A veteran women’s health advocate on federal funding cuts
Doctors for Change
Countway Library exhibit explores historic anti-nuclear activism
Most popular
Explore More From Current Issue
The Trump Administration's Impact on Higher Education
Unprecedented federal actions against research funding, diversity, speech, and more
89664Paper Peepshows at Harvard's Baker Library
How “paper peepshows” brought distant realms to life
89684