Harvard honors societal contributions

Graduate school alumni receive highest honors

Clockwise from far left: Judith Lasker, Bruce Alberts, Leo Marx, and Keith Christiansen

Clockwise from far left: Judith Lasker, Bruce Alberts, Leo Marx, and Keith Christiansen | Photograph by Bethany Versoy/courtesy of Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Science

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal, first awarded in 1989 on the occasion of the school’s hundredth anniversary, honors alumni who have made contributions to society that emerged from their graduate study at Harvard. It is the highest honor the Graduate School bestows, and awardees include some of Harvard’s most accomplished alumni. The 2014 recipients, announced at a ceremony on May 28, are: Bruce Alberts, Ph.D. ’66, Chancellor’s Leadership Chair in biochemistry and biophysics for science and education at the University of California, San Francisco; Keith Christiansen, Ph.D. ’77, Pope-Hennessy chairman of the department of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Judith Lasker, Ph.D. ’76, the N.E.H. Distinguished Professor of sociology at Lehigh University; and Leo Marx ’41, Ph.D. ’50, Kenan professor of American cultural history emeritus in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society. For more about the honorands, see https://harvardmagazine.com/2014/05/centennial-medalists.

You might also like

The former economics concentrator brings his talent for crunching numbers to netminding.

Graduates John Lithgow, Bill Rauch, and Bess Wohl took home prizes on Sunday night.

Harvard graduate and NASCAR racer Patrick Staropoli on pedals, attention, and fearlessness.

Most popular

An animal’s journey from grief to love shows how much humans need each other, too.

The Loneliness Pandemic

As the country isolates, are we all alone?

How Americans Turned Against Knowledge

Tom Nichols dissects the dangerous antipathy to expertise.

Explore More From Current Issue

Label showing the anatomy of a worker bee, featuring a detailed illustration.

Science and art capture the microscopic natural world.

Racing driver gives a thumbs up from inside a car, wearing a helmet and safety gear.

Harvard graduate and NASCAR racer Patrick Staropoli on pedals, attention, and fearlessness.

Black and white photo of Joseph Murray in a white lab coat sitting in an office.

Nobel Prize recipient Joseph E. Murray dedicated much of his career to organ transplant surgery.