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Developing Data Science
Harvard plans to build a data-science institute in Allston to support research, education, and entrepreneurship in what University leaders call “a new discipline.” Data science is central to research in public health, the physical, social, and biological …
Issue: May-June 2017
Off the Shelf
The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert J. Gordon ’62 (Princeton, $39.95). In a huge study of the U.S. standard of living since the Civil War, the Northwestern University economist, a leading scholar of productivity and growth, emerges with a very …
Issue: January-February 2016
Harvard Law and College Racial Concerns
Harvard Law School (HLS) affiliates entering Wasserstein Hall Thursday morning found a startling scene: portraits of every black professor in the school’s history defaced with black tape, an incident University police are investigating as a hate crime. …
Update: Harvard versus Princeton
Harvard pulled off another late-game victory on Saturday, upending a charged-up Princeton squad at windswept, rain-soaked Palmer Stadium. Trailing 20-17 with 4:59 left in the game, the Crimson offense had a critical fourth-and-one at midfield. The Tiger …
Fairfield Porter
In 1975, Fairfield Porter, A.B. 1928, accepted a commission for the Harvard Club of New York to paint former club president Alfred (Al) Gordon, A.B. 1923, M.B.A. ’25, whose portrait would join those of previous presidents lining the walls. Eschewing the …
Issue: September-October 2024
Congratulations, Contributors
We take great pleasure in saluting three outstanding contributors to Harvard Magazine for their work on readers’ behalf in 2015, and happily confer on each a $1,000 honorarium. Spencer Lenfield A former Ledecky Undergraduate Fellow at this magazine, …
Issue: January-February 2016
University Professors
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich Stephanie Mitchell/ Harvard News Office President Lawrence H. Summers appointed two utterly different historians, both members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, to University Professorships, Harvard’s most distinguished chairs, …
Issue: March-April 2006
“Here and Then Gone”
In playwright Bess Wohl’s work—sweet and sharp and sad, and often darkly funny—something important is usually missing. In American Hero, it is the owner of a new sandwich franchise who mysteriously disappears, leaving his employees to drift between …
Issue: January-February 2019
Our Masked Selves
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, amid spreading fears and sheltered isolation, Los Angeles artist Richard Nielsen painted a colorful portrait of himself in a mask. Soon, he was painting friends and family members in their …
Issue: March-April 2021
Restoring Justice
“I spent 28 years in prison,” Armand Coleman was saying to the Harvard Law School students and professors gathered over Zoom on an early spring afternoon. For 22 of those years, he lived in a maximum-security prison; for 12, he was in solitary …
Issue: July-August 2021
All in a Day: Hull’s Lifesaving Legacy
The best route to Hull is by boat. As the MBTA’s commuter ferry snakes among Boston Harbor’s islands, passengers can eye the treacherous shipping route that gave rise to the town’s Point Allerton Lifesaving Station in 1889. Back then, the “small, …
Issue: September-October 2015
Downsizing: Arsenal Buildings Sold
athenahealth , a healthcare computer-services company, and the lead tenant in the Arsenal on the Charles office complex, announced on December 5 that it has agreed to purchase the property from Harvard for $168.5 million to accommodate its headquarters …
Can Slime Molds Think?
Slime mold doesn’t look like much , really. The bright yellow protist goes by many names: ninth-century Chinese scholar Twang Ching-Shih called it “demon droppings”; Carl Linnaeus referred to it as “rotting mucus”; and Dallas residents who watched slime …
Issue: November-December 2021
“The Busiest Man in Poker”
In 2003 , when a complete amateur named Chris Moneymaker won the $2.5-million first prize at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), the game’s highest-profile event, Bernard Lee ’92 had already been playing poker with buddies in his hometown of Wayland, …
Issue: November-December 2012
Close to Par
Harvard’s endowment was valued at $36.4 billion last June 30, the end of fiscal year 2014—$3.7 billion more (11.3 percent) than at the end of fiscal 2013 , and within a half-billion dollars of the peak value achieved in fiscal 2008, just before the …
Issue: November-December 2014