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Bulfinch Magic
Architect Charles Bulfinch performed a death-defying feat in University Hall 188 years ago. He caused to be built a staircase of heavy granite, tons of it, that would float in space, supported (presumably) by its own interlocking steps. In fact, nobody …
Pulitzer Gift of Art Works and $45 Million Boosts Harvard Art Museum
Culminating her lifelong devotion to art collecting, connoisseurship, and scholarship—and a matching engagement with the University—Emily Rauh Pulitzer, A.M. '63, has given the Harvard Art Museum 31 important works of modern and contemporary art (one of …
Science Dean, Soccer Judge
In an all-volunteer youth soccer league, brave parents must rise to the occasion and create order from cleated and shin-guarded chaos. In the early 2000s, one such parent was Frank Doyle, now dean of the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied …
Issue: July-August 2019
Dedicating Maxwell Dworkin
How is it that a famous liberal-arts center like Harvard, home to what is arguably the world's first computer, could also be called the birthplace of the world's most successful software company? Are we sure we're not talking about MIT? At the dedication …
University People
Overseers Elevated The Board of Overseers, the University’s junior governing board, has elected Merrick B. Garland ’ 74, J.D. ’77, as president and Ann M. Fudge , M.B.A. ’77, as vice chair of the executive committee for 2009-2010. Garland is a judge on …
Issue: July-August 2009
No. Not Yet. Never.
Primus’s dentist once had him in the chair, mouth wide and jammed with oral hardware, when the dentist revealed that he had spent the morning in court in divorce proceedings initiated by his wife. “There is no pain worse,” said the dentist, drill poised, …
Issue: July-August 2009
Paper Persists
Paper lives. Two recent reminders that paper still has a purpose have come to Primus’s attention. Daniel D. Reiff ’63, Ph.D. ’70, an art historian at Fredonia State University who retired as SUNY Distinguished Service Professor emeritus in 2004, wrote …
Issue: May-June 2019
From Soaps to Solos
Operatic bass Ethan Herschenfeld ’90 never gave a thought to performing until he auditioned with his roommate, on a lark, for one of the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players’ operettas during freshman year. He became a familiar presence on …
Issue: July-August 2008
Rebuilding Churches
In college, Tim McCarthy ’93 was deeply involved in public service—as a Big Brother and head of the Freshman Urban Program steering committee, among other things—and also active in the anti-apartheid divestment movement. When he became a grad student at …
Issue: May-June 2008
Underground Party
Commuters making their way through the underground corridors of the sprawling Times Square subway station in Manhattan now have some extraordinary companions, with the completion in March of New Year’s Eve Revelers, a permanent mosaic mural adorning the …
Issue: May-June 2008
Assessing Admissions
In his new book, The Chosen , Jerome Karabel ’72, Ph.D. ’77, offers a provocative account of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale from the late 1800s to the present—a period when the “Big Three” were transformed by the addition of …
Issue: May-June 2006
University People
Enduring Deans, Acting Executives Kris Snibbe / Harvard News Office Alan A. Altshuler Alan A. Altshuler, Harvard Graduate School of Design dean since early 2005, has agreed to continue to serve during the fall semester at the request of President Drew …
Issue: September-October 2007
A "Better Answer"
The search for Harvard’s twenty-eighth president began under difficult circumstances. Lawrence H. Summers’s resignation on February 21, 2006, ended his presidency far sooner than had been expected. The Corporation, whose members (excluding the president) …
Issue: July-August 2007
Godmothers of The Namesake
Mira Nair ’79 met Sooni Taraporevala ’79 in the Lowell House dining room in the fall of 1976. The two women, both of Indian descent, became friends and, nine years later, began working together on the 1988 film Salaam Bombay! —Nair as director, …
Issue: March-April 2007
A Turning Point for WHRB
Harvard’s student radio station WHRB, an innovative voice in the Boston FM market for decades, is facing a difficult turning point. David Elliott ’64, the chairman of its board of trustees since 1996 and an éminence grise at WHRB for half a century, …