Featured series 
All articles
-
Health
Potential diabetes breakthrough
Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes, a metabolic illness afflicting an estimated 26 million Americans.
-
Campus & Community
Resources in the aftermath of tragedy
The following events are being held to help the Harvard community cope with Monday’s tragedy during the Boston Marathon.
-
Campus & Community
Radcliffe Gymnasium renamed
At a celebratory event on Wednesday, the Radcliffe Gymnasium was renamed the Knafel Center in honor of Sidney R. Knafel ’52, M.B.A. ’54, and in recognition of the center’s increasing role in promoting intellectual exchange across Harvard’s Schools and with the public.
-
Science & Tech
Science in service
Teams of students from “Engineering Sciences 20: How to Create Things and Have Them Matter” in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are working to create unusual products that are designed to change the world.
-
Science & Tech
The problem with predictions
People would like to predict the future, says author and mathematician David Orrell, but it remains quite a difficult thing to do, even with lots of data at hand.
-
Campus & Community
To protect, serve, mourn
The Harvard University Police Department joined thousands of colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday to pay tribute to Sean Collier, the officer slain in aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.
-
Arts & Culture
‘Beowulf,’ as it was told
Steven Rozensk and Matthew Sergi have collaborated with the American Repertory Theater for a public reading of the epic poem “Beowulf” in its original Old English. There is a free reading from noon to 5 p.m. at the A.R.T. on April 25.
-
Campus & Community
11 elected to American Academy
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected 11 from Harvard as its newest members.
-
Science & Tech
Robot hands gain a gentler touch
Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed an inexpensive tactile sensor for robotic hands that is sensitive enough to turn a brute machine into a dexterous manipulator.
-
Science & Tech
Insignificant, with a lousy future
Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss described a universe with mysterious particles popping in and out of existence, in which the discoveries of dark energy and dark matter have made mankind more insignificant than ever.
-
Arts & Culture
Confronting evil, embracing life
Two Harvard conferences, each trimmed from two days to one by the Boston Marathon bombing and resulting manhunt, provided surprisingly appropriate lessons of comfort and perspective.
-
Nation & World
With nature in mind
Kongjian Yu, who received a doctor of design degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1995, espouses an environmental design ethic that considers natural processes on a site first. Since 2010, he has guided GSD students through the problems related to China’s rapid urbanization.
-
Nation & World
Your own news platform
The information revolution seemed to hit another high gear last week in Boston, leaving authorities on information technology pondering the ramifications.
-
Science & Tech
Pitcher plants provide tipping point
New research out of the Harvard Forest offers insight on exactly when the tipping point occurs that can disrupt the intricate web of life in a lake.
-
Science & Tech
Earth feels impact of middle class
The rise of the middle class is a bigger environmental challenge than the rising global population, according to Sir David King, the former science adviser to the British government, who urged the adoption of sustainable development as a way to manage growing global demands in a finite world.
-
Campus & Community
With Visitas canceled, Harvard improvises
As a region-wide lockdown closed Harvard, University officials struggled with the difficult decision to cancel Visitas, Harvard College’s program for newly admitted students. Members of the Harvard community used social media to reach out to those who had planned to attend the event.
-
Campus & Community
Emerging to a renewed normal
After a tense Friday that saw the campus and the Greater Boston area on lockdown, Harvard came to life again Saturday as students and visitors flooded into Harvard Square.
-
Campus & Community
Shuttered but humming
As Greater Boston shut down during Friday’s manhunt for a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, Harvard halted too — and found peace, togetherness, and hope.
-
Health
The cost of doing nothing
The Forum at Harvard School of Public Health explored the high cost of inaction on children’s health on Tuesday, from long-term disabilities caused by failing to provide AIDS medications to major opportunities lost because of poor health, education, and economic opportunity.
-
Arts & Culture
Listen up, says Marsalis
Students in a Boston high school sacrificed some of their precious spring break to spend time with master trumpeter and jazz legend Wynton Marsalis.
-
Arts & Culture
Jazz as conversation
Artist and composer Wynton Marsalis returned to Sanders Theatre for his fourth lecture-performance at Harvard, an exploration of the strange alchemy of instinct, expertise, and empathy that jazz musicians need to “play and stay together.”
-
Campus & Community
Harvard community can help
For the many members of the Harvard community seeking to help the victims in the marathon tragedy and their families, please consider donating to the fund established by Governor Patrick and Mayor Menino, The One Fund Boston.
-
Campus & Community
Raj Chetty awarded Clark Medal
Harvard Professor of Economics Raj Chetty has been awarded the 2013 John Bates Clark Medal in recognition of his work, which combines empirical evidence and theory to inform the design of more effective government policies on everything from taxation to unemployment to education.
-
Health
The motivation to move
Using an unusual decision-making study, Harvard researchers exploring the question of motivation found that rats will perform a task faster or slower depending on the size of the benefit they receive, suggesting they maintain a long-term estimate of whether it’s worthwhile for them to invest the energy.
-
Science & Tech
Water worlds surface
Astronomers have found a planetary system orbiting the star Kepler-62. This five-planet system has two worlds in the habitable zone — the distance from their star at which they receive enough light and warmth for liquid water to theoretically exist on their surfaces.
-
Health
Big boost in drug discovery
Using a new, stem cell-based, drug-screening technology that could reinvent and greatly reduce the cost of developing pharmaceuticals, researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have found a compound that is more effective in protecting the neurons killed in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis than are two drugs that failed in human clinical trials.
-
Campus & Community
Engaging in a new community
The innovative international scholar Tamar Herzog has been appointed the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She also will become the Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
-
Campus & Community
An award for bike-friendly Harvard
The national advocacy organization League of American Bicyclists has recognized Harvard’s progress in supporting bicycle use by naming it a silver-level Bicycle Friendly University.
-
Campus & Community
Strength in numbers
For Harvard’s unusually tight-knit group of faculty, student, and staff runners, the Boston Marathon was meant to be the culmination of months of teamwork and training. After Monday’s bombings, the running community pulled together for a different reason.
-
Nation & World
Where the research takes you
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology, and Howard Gardner, John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, met to interview each other about their research, influences, and interests.
