Features
Getting to Mars (for Real)
Humans have been dreaming of living on the Red Planet for decades. Harvard researchers are on the case.
A Spectrum of Disorders
When Alison finally heard her son Matthew’s diagnosis, she had already spent a night on the Web, terrifying herself, as she puts it...
Sarah Wyman Whitman
Sarah Wyman Whitman was an original and compelling figure in late nineteenth century Boston. Very much a public personality, she was a painter...
Girl Power
When Dan Kindlon watches the Tigers play softball, he sees the legacy of feminism for girls. “My daughter’s concentrating on...
"...In My Mind I Am Perplexed"
The Civil War transformed American society and institutions. It brought about the formal end of slavery (but not of racial discrimination). It...
Two Women, Two Histories
As the second world war drew to a close, two women thought about applying to Harvard Law School. The first was an African-American native of...
White marble sculptures of antiquity
The English essayist and critic William Hazlitt gazed on the white marble sculptures of antiquity and thought them cold. “[T]he finest...
The Horror and the Beauty
Maria Tatar explores the dazzle and the “dark side” in fairy tales—and why we read them.
Brief life of ornithologist and writer William Brewster, by Alan Emmet
William Brewster was too frail, his eyesight too poor, said his parents and doctors, for him to attend Harvard. Instead, early each morning, he...
The Undiscovered Planet
All images courtesy of Roberto Kolter, unless otherwise noted Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton—these are familiar names. During a...
Gordon McKay
Brief life of an inventor with a lasting Harvard legacy: 1821-1903