All articles


  • Arts & Culture

    Mapping the future

    To reverse a decades-long decline in arts and humanities concentrators at Harvard College, three reports from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences propose new courses, art spaces, a networked curriculum, and other steps to bolster the field on campus.

  • Campus & Community

    College alumna receives Opel Award

    The 2013 Jane Rainie Opel Award was presented to Christin McConnell ’03 during a ceremony on Radcliffe Day.

  • Health

    Ministering to health

    Ministers of health from around the world came to the Harvard Kennedy School this week as part of a leadership workshop, co-sponsored with the School of Public Health, to improve health leadership globally.

  • Campus & Community

    Tucker Collins

    Tucker Collins was S. Burt Wolbach Professor of Pathology and the Chief of Pathology at Boston Children’s Hospital. He passed away in 2007 at the age of 54 years due to an aggressive brain tumor.

  • Campus & Community

    John Francis Burke

    John Francis (“Jack”) Burke was born on July 22, 1922 in Chicago, the first of three children born to Francis A. Burke, a railroad man, and Mary Biaggi. He died November 2, 2011 of pancreatic cancer. He filled those 89 years with grace and wry humor through many phases, including chemical engineer, Army Air Corps…

  • Campus & Community

    Bert Lester Vallee

    Bert Lester Vallee, who died on May 7, 2010, was a talented trace-metal biochemist, an innovative medical educator, a pioneer in academic-industrial relationships, and a creator of ingenious organizations that promoted biomedical research and collaborative international collegiality.

  • Campus & Community

    Joseph L. Henry

    Nothing about Joseph L. Henry was ordinary. In his academic career he excelled noticeably above others — as a student, teacher, department chair, dean, board member, national policy adviser, and as a mentor to many health professionals and policy makers.

  • Campus & Community

    Fritz Heinz Bach

    Fritz Heinz Bach, a brilliant transplant immunologist and the Lewis Thomas Distinguished Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School died of a cardiac arrest on Sunday, August 14, 2011 at his home at Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. He was 77 years old.

  • Campus & Community

    Roger William Jeanloz

    Roger William Jeanloz, Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology emeritus at Harvard Medical School, died shortly before his 90th birthday on September 28, 2007, in the south of France where he was on holiday with his wife, Dorothea.

  • Campus & Community

    Heinrich Dieter Holland

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on May 7, 2013, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Heinrich Dieter Holland, Harry C. Dudley Professor of Economic Geology, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Professor Holland was one of the founding fathers of the geochemistry of hydrothermal ore deposits.

  • Campus & Community

    William Nunn Lipscomb Jr.

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on March, 5, 2013, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late William N. Lipscomb, Jr., Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Professor Lipscomb was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1976 for his studies…

  • Campus & Community

    Mary Ellen Avery M.D.

    Dr. Mary Ellen Avery died on December 4, 2011 at the age of 84. She was best known to the world for her ground breaking research on the cause of hyaline membrane disease (later called Respiratory Distress Syndrome), an illness that claimed the lives of an estimated 10,000 infants in the United States each year.…

  • Campus & Community

    The creative crusader

    Radcliffe Day featured a celebration of the arts and the award of the Radcliffe Medal to actress and arts activist Jane Alexander, as well as a panel discussion that explored the challenges artists face.

  • Health

    Mouthful of clues

    Harvard researchers have demonstrated that the levels of barium in teeth correspond with breast-feeding. Importantly, they said, the barium levels can remain in fossils that are thousands of years old. This provides new opportunities to study breast-feeding behavior among Neanderthals and early humans.

  • Campus & Community

    Dorrit Cohn

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on April 2, 2013, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Dorrit Cohn, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Professor Cohn was internationally recognized as a major literary theorist and was one of the first women to…

  • Campus & Community

    Rolla Milton Tryon Jr.

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on March, 5, 2013, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Rolla Milton Tryon, Jr., Professor of Biology, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Professor Tryon was curator of ferns in Gray Herbarium and an authority on the taxonomy and geography of…

  • Campus & Community

    Mary Ellen Wohl

    Dr. Mary Ellen Wohl, known internationally for her research in pediatric pulmonary diseases, passed away at age 77 in October, 2010 at Rogerson House in Jamaica Plain. Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, she had served as Chief of the Division of Respiratory Diseases at Children’s Hospital Boston for 22 years and Director of…

  • Science & Tech

    Songs from the stars

    Gerhard Sonnert, a research associate at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has created a new website that allows listeners to literally hear the music of the stars.

  • Campus & Community

    Sharing a love for science

    Nearly 400 local eighth-grade students came to Harvard’s campus for SEAS’s third annual Science and Engineering Showcase.

  • Campus & Community

    Mission accomplished

    The Class of 2013 arrived in 2009 eager, wild-eyed, and excited — and four years later, they would leave just the same way.

  • Campus & Community

    Winfrey’s Commencement address

    Oprah Winfrey, the Afternoon Program’s principal speaker at Harvard’s 362nd Commencement, addressed the Class of 2013. This is the text of her speech as delivered on May 30.

  • Campus & Community

    Winfrey: Failure is just movement

    Harvard Commencement speaker Oprah Winfrey addressed the Class of 2013 under sunny skies and called for them to accept failure, and then triumph over it. During the Afternoon Program, Harvard President Drew Faust recapped the year and called for increased federal funding for research universities.

  • Campus & Community

    Oprah Winfrey Commencement Speech | Harvard Commencement 2013

    Oprah Winfrey, talk show host and media entrepreneur, addresses graduates at Harvard’s 362nd Commencement on May 30, 2013.

  • Campus & Community

    To graduate from Harvard | Harvard Commencement

    This video captures the tradition and emotion, the pomp and circumstance of Commencement Day at Harvard — through the eyes of a graduating student.

  • Campus & Community

    Conferring of Honorary Degrees | Harvard Commencement 2013

    The conferring of honorary degrees at Harvard’s 362nd Commencement at Tercentenary Theatre on May 30, 2013.

  • Campus & Community

    Board of Overseers 2013 election results

    The president of the Harvard Alumni Association today announced the results of the annual election of new members of the Harvard Board of Overseers.

  • Arts & Culture

    Shining a light on an era

    A new work at the American Repertory Theater, developed by members of the A.R.T. Institute and part of the four-year National Civil War Project, explores the story of escaped slave Anthony Burns and the work of the Boston abolitionists.

  • Campus & Community

    Joy by the Yard

    Snapshots of Harvard’s 2013 Commencement, a day marked by sunshine and warmth as well as rituals, honors, and good wishes.

  • Campus & Community

    Latin Oration Fanaye Yirga | Harvard Commencement 2013

    Latin Speaker Fanaye Yirga speaks at the 362nd Harvard Commencement Ceremony at Tercentenary Theatre on May 30, 2013.

  • Campus & Community

    Graduate English speech Jon Murad | Harvard Commencement 2013

    Graduate Speaker Jon Murad speaks at the 362nd Harvard Commencement Ceremony at Tercentenary Theatre on May 30, 2013.