Science

Discover the scientific breakthroughs and engineering innovations being pioneered across Harvard’s labs and centers.

Smiling woman stands beside a large skull in a display cabinet.

Don’t Call Stephanie Pierce A Paleontologist

From competing in youth gymnastics to studying tetrapods, the Harvard curator has always chased her curiosity.

by Laurel M. Shugart

Nancy Cyr conscientiously weighs her holiday options.

tips for healthy holiday eating

Eating well and feeling good through the holidays

by Nell Porter-Brown

Nobel Prize Chemistry Steitz

Three scientists, including a 1966 Harvard Ph.D., are recognized for fundamental work on the ribosome.

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Great Mammal Hall at Harvard Museum of Natural History reopens

The Great Mammal Hall in the Harvard Museum of Natural History is restored and reopened.

James Watson and Edward O. Wilson: An Intellectual Entente

James D. Watson and Edward O. Wilson, two major exponents of modern biology, reflect on the convergence of the evolutionary and molecular approaches in their field.

Gas jets punch out of the collapsing star and blast into space, producing gamma rays that can be detected billions of light years away.

Gamma-ray bursts reveal the oldest star yet discovered

A star more than 13 billion years old

by Jonathan Shaw

Robert Patterson’s letter to Thomas Jefferson included a worked example of his cipher. He began by writing his message in lower-case letters and in columns, running top to bottom like Chinese. This example begins with the words “Buonaparte has at last given peace to Europe,” legible in the first two columns.

Jefferson's Conundrum

Mathematician Lawren Smithline ’94 has decrypted an encoded message sent to Thomas Jefferson in 1801.

by Craig Lambert

Traditional light-microscopy, such as this image of human brain-tumor cells in culture, still has a place in cancer research.

Virtual Tumors

Modeling tumors may help scientists beat cancer.

by Mike Martin

Brain images show the differences in activity patterns between the two groups of subjects that professor of psychology Jill Hooley examined. The brains of recovered depressed subjects (left) had more active amygdalae while listening to criticism than did the brains of subjects who had never been depressed. The brains of the latter showed more activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (center) and the anterior cingulate cortex (right) compared to brains of subjects with a history of depression.

How Depression Lingers

After depression patients recover, their brains still process criticism differently.

by Elizabeth Gudrais

This portrait of Smith forms part of a mural, by Nelson Chase, that decorates the Aesculapian Room of the Harvard Club of Boston.

Theobald Smith

A brief profile of the pioneering comparative pathologist

by Steven M. Niemi

Michael McCormick

Sexual apartheid in medieval England

Cutting-edge science helps historians push further and more fully into the past.

by Jonathan Shaw