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“This Beautiful Machine”
Paola Arlotta is searching for the words to describe the clusters of cells, incubating quietly in a small room next to her laboratory, that have profoundly reshaped her life’s work—not just the how or how much or how fast of her research, but the very …
Issue: July-August 2023
Measuring Impact in the “Missing Middle”
In an idealized business transaction (ignoring restraints on competition and marketing blandishments), willing shoppers choose the products and services they want, and companies measure their sales, cash flow, profits, and return on capital—financial …
Issue: September-October 2015
Empathy and Imagination
Only the Animals , by Ceridwen Dovey ’03, is a beautifully wrought, disconcerting collection of stories told by the souls of dead animals. A cat is picked off by a sniper on the Western Front; a blue mussel drowns in Pearl Harbor; a courageous tortoise is …
Issue: September-October 2015
Untangling the Brain
Modern neuroscience rests on the assumption that our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and behaviors emerge from electrical and chemical communication between brain cells: that whenever we recognize a face, read the newspaper, throw a ball, engage in a …
Issue: May-June 2009
Affording a Harvard Graduation
Graduation is a rite of passage when families are united, tears are shed, and memories are shared. But for some students, it is also a time when belts are tightened. “I can go to this event that costs $40, or I can eat for the day,” Lenica …
Dumbarton Oaks Fêtes New Programs and Spaces
The music of Roomful of Teeth , the Grammy-winning vocal ensemble who performed at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection on Sunday, serves as perhaps an apt metaphor for how discrete disciplines come together at the University’s Washington, D.C.- …
Amartya Sen, a Memoir
Home in the World , Amartya Sen’s memoir of his years in the U.K, was published there July 8. Below, Gardiner professor of oceanic history and affairs Sugata Bose previews for North American readers a few highlights of the book, which covers the first 30 …
The Humanities Village People
Rachel Gibian ’15 will spend a considerable part of her summer in the stacks of the Schlesinger and Houghton libraries, digging up primary documents about women who were active abolitionists during the American Civil War. Her archival work will help …
Joseph Conrad’s Crystal Ball
Many call Rudyard Kipling the scribe of the British Empire, but novelist Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) may have best rendered its waning years and foreshadowed its demise. Around the turn of the last century, Conrad’s books portrayed terrorism in Europe, …
Issue: May-June 2014
Hansjörg Wyss Boosts Bioengineering Innovation
The University announced today a gift of $131 million from Hansjörg Wyss, M.B.A. ’65, to support the operations of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. This is the third such gift that the Swiss-born entrepreneur has made to the …
Off the Shelf: Recent Books with Harvard Connections
Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work, by Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg (Harvard Business Review Press, $30). The director of the Business School’s Gender Initiative and the Chapman professor of business …
Issue: July-August 2021
A Rudenstine Retrospective
Only 10 years ago, at the end of the 1990-1991 academic year, Harvard and the higher-education universe were very far from their current robust prosperity. The annual financial statements showed a $42-million deficit--$5 million worse than in the prior …
A Gendered Schedule
As the Princeton men’s basketball team pulled away from Penn in overtime of the Ivy League tournament semifinals last March, a Tigers supporter paced just outside the team’s locker room, loudly willing the clock down to zero “Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.” His …
Radical Reviewing
In 1979 , a voice on the radio attracted the attention of George Scialabba ’69. It was “gentle and earnest, logical, persuasive, politically astute,” he recalls. “I was surprised to hear it was Noam Chomsky, whom I knew only as a linguist.” Scialabba ( …
Issue: November-December 2013
New EPA Administrator Gives Inaugural Speech at Harvard Law School
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy affirmed the Obama administration’s commitment to fighting climate change in her first public address since assuming her new role. Her spirited remarks, delivered Tuesday at Harvard Law …