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Pondering the Extracurricular “Founders” Puzzle
… for a postgraduate fellowship last fall over Zoom, one of the interviewers pointed out that during my time at Harvard, … your résumé with the title of ‘Founder’?” It’s difficult to rise to the presidency of a student organization steeped in …
Issue: July-August 2021
Portrait of a Pioneer
… On February 11, a portrait of astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was scheduled to be unveiled on the wall of the Faculty Room in University Hall, where males greatly …
Issue: March-April 2002
Secrets of Longevity: New Evidence from Rockfish
… A new study of longevity in rockfish, which includes some species that live more than 200 years and others that live fewer than a dozen, identifies a set of … sense, he adds, since (as noted) long life is thought to arise principally as a side effect of delayed maturation, …
Sister Acts and Cyanotypes
… New York-based painter Julia Rooney ’11 shows me a part of a project she’s finishing—a series of camera-less … photographic prints called cyanotypes. Developed in the mid-1800s, the cyanotype process produces a blue image … in the mail involves it being touched by people and by machines and by systems that we are completely unaware of,” …
Issue: July-August 2025
Building Momentum
… Understandably , when it comes to imagining the campus of the future, all eyes are on Allston. Harvard's … down ward. Make way for grad students: New housing rises in Allston. First, a bit of perspective. Much of the …
Issue: May-June 2002
"At the Interface"
… On a rainy September morning in 1999, hundreds of Native Americans gathered on the Mall near the U.S. Capitol to celebrate the … for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Senator Ben Nighthorse …
To Catch a Crawdad
… spent frantically watching lecture videos late into the night, I instead found myself driving a 16-foot, … how many basic assumptions were undermined. I felt a profound connection with the protagonist of Disney’s The … is silvery and softly reflective, like the starship Enterprise. The buds, fuzzy and hard, emerge while the rest of the …
Issue: September-October 2020
Decoding the Deep
… or a spitting log as it burns, end in a crescendo of sound resembling a rapidly spinning cog rattle, followed … final extra click. “Dive,” one sperm whale is saying to another. This is the first word in the language of sperm whales that humans have learned. These creatures, …
Issue: July-August 2024
Rhythms of Race
… At age 36, Kevin Young ’92 ranks among the most accomplished poets of his generation. The recipient of Guggenheim, Stegner, and NEA fellowships, he recently …
Issue: September-October 2007
The Whistle
… M.B.A. ’95, golfs with his two young sons, Jack and Danny. “They love it, but they wouldn’t sit and watch a four-hour … and make it fast-paced, with graphics and stats on the side of the screen, and interviews with players, and audio—more … engaged.” At least that’s what West and other co-founders of The Whistle are betting on. The new company promotes …
Issue: July-August 2012
Talking About Tipping Points
… While climate change is frequently discussed as a problem of gradual warming, numerous features in the global climate system are thought to be at risk of … renewable energy production, carbon emissions continue to rise. “When you find yourself in a hole, the first rule is …
Games of Trust and Betrayal
… but about how outcomes came to be,” says associate professor of public policy Iris Bohnet of the Kennedy School of Government. “That doesn’t strike anyone but an economist—like me—as a surprise.” Game theory, as conceptualized by conventional …
Issue: March-April 2006
RISD Craft Fair
… Vermont designer George Sawyer grew up “in the wood shavings in my father’s Windsor chair shop,” and … studio. Using local wood, he explores “the interconnection of the natural world and human effort, those things that can and cannot be controlled within the framework of functional forms.” See his elegant furniture—and hundreds …
Issue: September-October 2023
“The Future We Shape Is Up to Us”
… In an opening address inaugurating the new academic year, President Drew Faust encouraged the … that lie ahead—and the other on the fiscal realities of a still-weakened economy. “Harvard is about … and the foundations of our nation’s research enterprise.” As technology evolves and gives rise to new …
The Football Industrial Complex
… Dick Friedman ’73—proud alumnus of both Fair Harvard and Sports Illustrated, where he toiled … each fall, in lively, nuanced accounts resonant with the sport’s history . Now he has dived deep into the glory … the college….The fact is that, driven on by the enterprise of our sporting editors, we are as a people losing our …
Issue: September-October 2018