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Michael Mina holds up a rapid test during a Zoom call with journalists
Harvard Magazine/JSS
Rapid COVID-19 tests, of the kind that Michael Mina has been advocating since last year, are finally approved for home use.
Harvard's acceptance rate drops as applications rise.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Daderot
Harvard admits a record-low 3.4 percent of applicants
William "Bill" Kristol.
Photograph courtesy of Harvard Kennedy School.
Bill Kristol discusses the future of the Republican Party and the survival of American constitutional democracy.
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A professor and a marketing professional have teamed up to raise awareness of the climate problem through the nonpartisan, nonprofit Potential Energy Coalition.
From the potentialenergycoalition.org website
A professor and a marketing professional try a new tack in climate-change communications.
Harvard Computers and Radcliffe students in 1925
Photograph courtesy of the Harvard Library ArchivesAlumni scientist-filmmakers bring the Harvard Computers’ story to the screen.
Harvard Law School students Anna Vande Velde and William Roberts
Photograph courtesy of Harvard Law SchoolA Law School report offers the City of Boston recommendations for reform.
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Harvard's acceptance rate drops as applications rise.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Daderot
Harvard admits a record-low 3.4 percent of applicants
Cabot House members cheered up the wintry Quad with their hand-crafted ice lanterns.
Photograph courtesy of Cabot House faculty dean Ian Miller and resident dean Meg Lockwood.
Undergraduate Houses experiment and innovate in attempts to revive the effervescence that once characterized their student communities.
March 2018, Randolph Courtyard: The author (center) and her two future roommates, Sreya at left and Pranati at right, have just run over from the Yard on Housing Day, having learned they’d been assigned to Adams House.
Photograph courtesy of Meena Venkataramanan.
The College’s annual “Housing Day” dramas, conducted online.
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Loeb House, where the governing boards convene
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/ Caroline Culler
The annual election of Overseers and alumni association directors is under way.
Harvard Computers and Radcliffe students in 1925
Photograph courtesy of the Harvard Library ArchivesAlumni scientist-filmmakers bring the Harvard Computers’ story to the screen.
Noah Evers ’22 and his grandmother Patricia Greenfield ’62, Ph.D. ’66
Photo by Lauren Greenfield ’87
A Harvard grandmother’s—and grandson’s—research
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Photo courtesy of Didriks.com
Turning your al fresco space into a springtime oasis
A still from The Painter and the Thief
From the filmA short list of fine
documentaries and feature films
Shen Wei in his New York studio, 2014
Photograph by Jeffrey Sturges
“Shen Wei: Painting in Motion,” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
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March 2018, Randolph Courtyard: The author (center) and her two future roommates, Sreya at left and Pranati at right, have just run over from the Yard on Housing Day, having learned they’d been assigned to Adams House.
Photograph courtesy of Meena Venkataramanan.
The College’s annual “Housing Day” dramas, conducted online.
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Harvard Computers and Radcliffe students in 1925
Photograph courtesy of the Harvard Library ArchivesAlumni scientist-filmmakers bring the Harvard Computers’ story to the screen.
A still from The Painter and the Thief
From the filmA short list of fine
documentaries and feature films
Illustration by Alex Williamson.
In a new book, Louis Menand probes the cultural currents of postwar America.
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David Melly rounds Harvard Stadium. Running the loop counterclockwise, he acknowledges, is controversial.
Photograph by Molly Malone
A legendary route’s disputed distance
An adept passer and gritty defender, Zeng also finished fifth in the Ivy League in service aces.
Photograph by Gil Talbot/Harvard Athletic Communications
Volleyball captain Sandra Zeng’s defensive focus
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Solomon Gate in its typical open position
At Houghton and Lamont libraries, a creative new entry into the Yard
David Melly rounds Harvard Stadium. Running the loop counterclockwise, he acknowledges, is controversial.
Photograph by Molly Malone
A legendary route’s disputed distance
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From the archives
Illustration by Dan Page
The Newsmakers
Observations from Twitter prove that even the smallest news outlets can shape public opinion.
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May-June 2020
Letters
Authoritarianism, labor law, climate change, and more
President Bacow on encountering—and coming to terms with—COVID-19
Faculty governance and long-range intellectual planning for Harvard
The College Pump
Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JSR
Houseboating in Boston Harbor, Apthorp North, and clothing counts
Treasure
Click on arrow at right to see additional images
(1 of 8) Margaret Mee, Tabebuia umbellata, the yellow trumpet tree. Cult. São Paulo, Proc. Butantã, August 1964
Image courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks Rare Book Collection.
Botanical bounty at Dumbarton Oaks
In this Issue
(Click on arrow at right to see additional images)
(1 of 7) The St. Louis, Missouri, skyline on the Mississippi River, as seen from East St. Louis, IllinoisPhotograph by Visions of America/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Walter Johnson’s radical history of St. Louis
(Click on arrow at right to see the full image) Patricia Watwood’s 2001 posthumous portrait of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin echoes Vermeer’s The Astronomer.
Painting © Patricia Watwood/From the Harvard University Portrait Collection. Gift of Dudley and Georgene Herschbach
Photograph © President and Fellows of Harvard College
Brief life of a breakthrough astronomer: 1900-1979
President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2021 U.S. budget, pre-COVID-19: add a few trillion dollars of debt
Photograph by Samuel Corum/Getty Images
The politics, policymaking, and public consequences of mounting government debt—and how to cope with it
Americans use a lot of technologically sophisticated, expensive medical services—slighting more effective, routine care.
Photograph by Rui Vieira/PA Wire/AP Images
Administrative costs, greed, overutilization—can these drivers of U.S. medical costs be curbed?
Letters
Authoritarianism, labor law, climate change, and more
President Bacow on encountering—and coming to terms with—COVID-19
Faculty governance and long-range intellectual planning for Harvard
Right Now
(Click on arrow at right to see full image) Butterflies of six different species, photographed in infrared wavelengths, reveal patterns unseen in visible light.
Image courtesy of Naomi Pierce and Nanfang Yu
A study reveals new dimensions to their function and beauty.
Matthias Nahrendorf uses equipment like this PET/CT imaging scanner to study the role of white blood cells in inflammation.
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Exercise attenuates stem cell production of pro-inflammatory white blood cells.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker
Elizabeth Bartholet highlights risks when parents have 24/7 authoritarian control over their children.
Activity tracking to identify the at-risk elderly, and China’s offshore windfarm potential
Harvard Squared
(Click on arrow at right to see additional images)
(1of 7) Old Slater Mill sitePhotograph courtesy of Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park
Tracing America’s industrial roots in the Blackstone River Valley
(Click on arrow at right to see additional images)
(1 of 3) Exhibits, like this replica of a textile-mill floor, reveal long days of grueling work on dangerous mill machinery.Photograph courtesy of the Museum of Work & Culture
Woonsocket’s historic French-Canadian community
(Click on arrow at right to see additional images)
(1 of 3) Lawman Captain Harry Love and two of his California Rangers (the state’s first law-enforcement agency), circa 1853Photograph courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum
“Gold Rush: Daguerreotypes of Early California,” at the Peabody Essex Museum
Bright-red clackers helped public-health degree candidates promote hand-washing on Commencement morning in 2019.
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Harvard’s 369th Commencement goes virtual.
“Rohan Duck” at Talulla
Photograph by Wayne E. Chinnock/Courtesy of Talulla
Where to (eventually, again) feast with friends and family in Greater Boston
John Harvard's Journal
An unseasonable move-out: packing up at Eliot House
Photograph by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images
The sudden dispersal from Cambridge and Boston, Commencement postponed, and the looming financial consequences
Susan Murphy
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Portrait of a hockey-playing statistician—from Louisiana
Bharat N. Anand
Photograph courtesy of Bharat N. Anand
A push to emphasize learning rather than teaching
Click on arrow at right to see full image
Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/HPAC
Widener Library’s overlooked designer
Martin Baron and Melinda Gates
From left: Courtesy of Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post; Courtesy of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Baron and Gates planned at Commencement, new Corporation member, a lawsuit renewed, and more
Developments at Harvard, Brown’s changed investments, and Yale’s engagement with companies in its portfolio
A plot of Lorenz’s “butterfly effect” model: “curves wrapping themselves wildly around the x and y axes ”
Creative Commons
A student scientist contemplates power and the denial of scholarship.
A necessary but brutal blow
Cai (far left) and teammates swarm Filip Dolegiewiez, who clinched their Ivy title.
Photograph courtesy of Crimson Athletic Communications
How Harvard fencers won an Ivy championship
Senior forward Chris Lewis led the Crimson in rebounding, en route to an All-Ivy League Second Team selection.
Photograph by Erica Denhoff
Injuries—and the coronavirus—lead to disappointing basketball seasons.
Montage
InThis is Love,filmmakers John Alexander and JC Guest document Rudy Love’s scattered, euphoric, tumultuous life.
Image courtesy of The Love Story LLC
John Alexander follows the ups and downs of funk musician Rudy Love.
© Mandarinkap/Dreamstime.com
The Business School’s Rebecca Henderson reimagines capitalism to save the planet.
“Telephone Poles” (1947): an ordinary landscape, observed and drawn by J.B. Jackson
Courtesy of Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
Recent books with Harvard connections
Paul Yoon
Photograph by Peter Yoon
Novelist Paul Yoon explores Laos’s forgotten war.
The artistic mission of the renovated Chelsea Theatre is partly informed by its public-housing neighborhood.
Photograph by Maurice Savage/Alamy Stock Photo
Joshua McTaggart leads London’s Chelsea Theatre into a new era.
Bunting Fellows in conversation, circa 1964-1972; Tillie Olsen, holding a cup, is at right.
Photograph by Olive Pierce (circa 1964-1972). Copyright © the Pierce family. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
From “women’s confinement” to “women’s liberation” at the Radcliffe Institute
A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words
(Click on arrow at right to see additonal images)
(1 of 3) Yamhill’s physical charm, complete with a general store, may make it easy to overlook its people’s struggles.Photograph by Lynsey Addario
Americans diminished by “social poverty”
Alumni
Barrett at a favorite birding site overlooking Turtle Pond, in Central Park, with Manhattan’s Upper East Side beyond
Photograph by Robert Adam Mayer
A quest to chronicle New York City’s avian community
The official 2020 slates
The College Pump
Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JSR
Houseboating in Boston Harbor, Apthorp North, and clothing counts
Treasure
Click on arrow at right to see additional images
(1 of 8) Margaret Mee, Tabebuia umbellata, the yellow trumpet tree. Cult. São Paulo, Proc. Butantã, August 1964
Image courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks Rare Book Collection.
Botanical bounty at Dumbarton Oaks