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May-June 2013

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Letters

Letters on same-sex marriage, cardiac care, engineering in Allston

A letter from the editor

A letter from President Faust

The College Pump

The beginning of Thomas’s entry in the Class of 1838’s Class Book (Harvard University Archives, HUD 238.714)

From a hole in the ground to Harvard

Treasure

Fragment of a wall tile from Iran, dating from the thirteenth to fourteenth century

Art on display from Iran, Iraq, and Central Asia spans a millennium.

In this Issue

A rendering of the Giant Magellan Telescope in operation in Chile, deploying the lasers for its adaptive-optics system

The big science of building a giant telescope

Randall Kennedy at the table where he does his research in the reading room of Harvard Law School’s Langdell Library

Randall Kennedy probes the “variousness” of charged racial issues.

Paths toward employment for low-income blacks and Latinos

This posthumous 2007 portrait, by Stephen Coit ’71, M.B.A. ’77, was commissioned by the Harvard Foundation four decades after Monro left Harvard for Miles College.

Brief life of an uncommon educator: 1912-2002

Letters

Letters on same-sex marriage, cardiac care, engineering in Allston

A letter from the editor

A letter from President Faust

Right Now

Scientists probe the function of a human gene by observing its effects in a mouse.

Compact apartments are proliferating in the United States. Here, artist’s renderings show how the MMNY micro-units, prefabricated in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and shipped to the East 27th Street building site, will be stacked atop each other like Lego bricks.

With micro-units, three GSD alumni hope to revolutionize apartment living in New York City.

Humans lack a mouse’s high tolerance for bacteria in the bloodstream, a clue that the two species have evolved very different responses to inflammatory disease.

Mice don't work as model organisms for human burns, blunt trauma and infection.

John Harvard's Journal

The Crimson shocks New Mexico in NCAA tournament upset, loses in 2nd round.

Fallout from cheating investigation widens as additional reviews of a resident dean’s accounts are reported to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Updating a classic: CB22x, the online version of Gregory Nagy’s vintage “Heroes” course

A first-year report on HarvardX and edX, the online-education partnership with MIT

From the pages of the <i>Harvard Alumni Bulletin</i> and <i>Harvard Magazine</i>

Martin Puchner

The English professor has already written three books and edited the 6,000-page third edition of the <i>Norton Anthology of World Literature.</i>

The University approaches a public fundraising drive

The Undergraduate, from Ireland, finds friendship in a local host family.

Oprah Winfrey will be the principal speaker at Commencement

Harvard news: Oprah at Commencement, Cass R. Sunstein, College admissions and costs, union contract, quiz-show titles overturned, sustainable-investing vice president, and more

Weiler on his way up to clear the bar (green, at left). Note the bend in his pole, far below. The orange foam pads cushion landings.

Nico Weiler clears inhuman heights, and not by human instinct.

Women’s water polo player Aisha Price is one of Harvard’s leading scorers.

Montage

The writer at work: Soman Chainani in his Brooklyn apartment

A fairy tale for today’s world

Independence Day, 1942: the first field test of napalm, behind Harvard Business School

A new book traces napalm's invention to Harvard—and its evolution from heroic discovery to pariah

Filmmaker Julie Mallozzi intercut scenes of Lalita Bharvani at home, tending to her garden or doing yoga, with startling images of x-rays and medical tests, including an echocardiogram. One poignant scene shows Bharvani visiting her elderly mother in India.

Indelible Lalita’s saga of pigmentation and personhood

Alexander Wilson&rsquo;s colorful craft: a fanciful collection of waterfowl, from Harvard&rsquo;s archives

Recent books with Harvard connections

Distinguished couple: Professor Louis Agassiz, ever the scientist, ever the creationist, despite the evidence for Darwinian evolution, and Elizabeth (Cary) Agassiz, who emerges impressively from the last chapter of this new biography

The fruitful, flawed Louis Agassiz

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Alumni

Nick Wyman (on the set of <i>The Single Girls Guide)</i> promotes fair pay for hard-working actors.

A Broadway actor on the “true spark of theater”

2013 candidates for Harvard University Overseers and HAA elected directors

Shared Interest Group events in May and June

Harvard alumni may sign in to view class notes and obituaries.

The College Pump

The beginning of Thomas’s entry in the Class of 1838’s Class Book (Harvard University Archives, HUD 238.714)

From a hole in the ground to Harvard

Treasure

Fragment of a wall tile from Iran, dating from the thirteenth to fourteenth century

Art on display from Iran, Iraq, and Central Asia spans a millennium.