An indignant new president, Nathan Marsh Pusey '28, Ph.D. '37, summons the press into his office--an unprecedented initiative--to fire back at Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had assailed Harvard as "a smelly mess" of "communist professors." JOHN LOENGARD/CRIMSON

Biddies, more politely "goodies," cease making the beds of undergraduates. Their future has looked cloudy since 1950, when they mentioned a raise in pay. Former head cheerleader Roger L. Butler '51 had described daily maid service as Harvard's "one last remnant of gracious living." HARVARD UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

John F. Kennedy '40, LL.D. '56--the first president of the United States born in the twentieth century and the youngest (43 years) at election--appoints so many Cantabrigians that columnist James Reston writes that there will be "nothing left at Harvard but Radcliffe." PROVIDENCE JOURNAL-BULLETIN

For modeling the double-helical structure of DNA in 1953 and thus helping to foment a revolution in his field, professor of biology James D. Watson is named co-recipient of the Nobel Prize. RICK STAFFORD

High-rise Harvard: As a Pusey-era expansion doubles Harvard's building space, brick gives way to cool concrete modernism in the form of the towering William James Hall (1964), Peabody Terrace (1964, at left), and Holyoke Center (1967). LEW HEDBERG

An era of angry political activism, fueled by the war in Vietnam, is punctuated by SDS-led protests against defense secretary Robert McNamara, M.B.A. '39, trapped near Quincy House in 1966, and peaks in the April 1969 SDS occupation of University Hall, the bust, and the ensuing strike. JULIAN LEVY/HARVARD UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES. FIST: HARVEY J. HACKER

Game of the century: With identical 8-0 records and an Ivy League championship on the line, the Crimson matches the Bulldogs, scoring 16 points in the final 42 seconds at the Stadium as "Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29." TIM CARLSON

The times, they are a-changing, as Radcliffe students move into Winthrop House for a spring-term trial period of "co-residency." CHRISTOPHER S. JOHNSON

Derek Curtis Bok, LL.B. '54, dean of the Law School, succeeds Pusey. The first president since 1672 who has not attended the College, Bok quickly reshapes the administration, challenges students to sports contests, and moves his young family off campus to Elmwood, a mile from the Yard--where he plants new shrubs. JUDITH PARKER