March 29, 1872 – The Arnold Arboretum (the nations oldest arboretum) formally comes into existence when, at the discretion of three Boston trustees (George B. Emerson, John James Dixwell, and Francis E. Parker), a residuary bequest of over $100,000 from New Bedford (Mass.) merchant James Arnold is legally transferred to the Harvard Corporation to develop a scientific station for the study and cultivation of trees. The Corporation agrees to let the fund grow to $150,000 before devoting the net income to (1) maintaining an institution to be known as the Arnold Arboretum and (2) supporting an Arnold Professor to oversee it. The Corporation also agrees to locate the Arboretum on 120 acres in the Jamaica Plain/Forest Hills section of West Roxbury (Boston) left to it by Benjamin Bussey. (Subsequent additions increase the size to more than 265 acres.)
The Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations presents Per Wästberg, a member of the Nobel Prize Committee of the Swedish Academy. Wästberg will discuss The Nobel Prize: Who Gets It and Who Does Not, on Thursday, April 4 at 7:30 p.m., at the Memorial Church. This is the inaugural Peter J. Gomes Lecture.
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Saturday, March 16. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor.
Harvard fencing sends three to NCAA Championships Junior foiler Ben Schmidt has been selected to compete at the NCAA Fencing Championships slated for March 21-24 at Drew University in Madison,…
The way the word model is used in academic discourse can seem a bit of a letdown for those who grew up gluing together miniature aircraft carriers from boxes full of tiny plastic parts or stretching tissue paper over the balsa frameworks of World War I biplanes. Too often in academe models turn out to be something entirely abstract – numerical constructions that exist only in the electronic environment of a computer.
To the tune of 85-58, the North Carolina Tar Heels tripped up the Harvard womens basketball team this past Saturday (March 16) at the Big Dance in Chapel Hill. Capitalizing on superior quickness and physical play – and the Crimsons cold shooting (33 percent) – the fourth-seeded Tar Heels, who led by 18 at the half, broke the game open with a 13-0 run early in the second quarter. Ivy League Rookie of the Year Reka Cserny led the Crimson with 16 points, while sophomore Tricia Tubridy made some noise with four blocks. The loss capped an Ivy title winning campaign for the Crimson (22-6), and the Ivy Leagues highest NCAA Tournament seeding at 13.
Talk about a turnaround. After dropping seven of their final 10 regular season games, the Harvard mens hockey teams postseason hopes werent exactly sky high. Yet with a most unusual three game win streak under their belt: all OT wins – against Brown, Clarkson, and Ivy Champion Cornell – the Crimson suddenly finds itself thrust into the thick of the 2002 NCAA Tournament. Beating Cornell in double overtime 4-3 on Saturday, March 16, in Lake Placid, N.Y., the Crimson extended its very own March madness by capturing its sixth ECAC title, its first since 1994, while receiving an automatic bid to the NCAA regionals.
William Christie 66, internationally acclaimed harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist, and teacher, will receive the eighth annual Harvard Arts Medal.
Business leaders in human resources and knowledge management gathered at the Faculty Club Wednesday, March 13 for the quarterly meeting of Learning Innovations Laboratories (LILA) of the Harvard Graduate School of Educations Project Zero. LILA participants discuss organizational change and share stories from the trenches, said David Perkins, professor of education and facilitator of LILA. These are not corporate bottom-line people. These are people concerned about the human dimension, about getting people to work together, he said.
Sixteen Harvard-related students are among the 30 recipients for the 2002 Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellowship. Fellows receive a $20,000 maintenance stipend plus half-tuition for as many as two years of graduate study at any institution of higher learning in the United States. Of the 16 recipients from Harvard, 11 are present or to be enrolled graduate students, four are alumni, and one is an undergraduate.
William Saturno was hot, frustrated, low on food, low on water, and low on patience when he sought shade in a trench dug by looters at the San Bartolo archaeological site deep inside the Guatemalan jungle.
Last month, when Professor Charles Lieber and his students made wires whose thinness is measured in atoms instead of fractions of an inch, he boasted excitedly that there are so many potential uses for this technology that we feel like kids in a candy shop.
George Francis Carrier, one of the worlds pre-eminent applied mathematicians and T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Applied Mathematics Emeritus, died of cancer in a Boston hospital on March 8. He was 83 and lived in Wayland.
To reach Hal Hartleys office, you must descend into the basement of Sever Hall and wend your way through a maze of low-ceilinged corridors, stopping in momentary perplexity at restroom doors and emergency exits until you find yourself in the warren of rooms that houses the filmmaking faculty of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES).
Lifting the U.S. ban on paid organ donations might help meet the desperate need of thousands of sick and dying recipients, but some fear it would also expand a thriving international market that already views the poor as little more than a source for spare parts.
Jeremy R. Knowles, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has announced this years Walter Channing Cabot Fellows. Honored for their eminence in history, literature, or art, as such terms may be liberally interpreted, the new fellows are Tom Conley, professor of romance languages and literatures Peter Ellison, professor of anthropology Michael McCormick, professor of history Michael Sandel, professor of government Kay Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History.
Old-school feminism came to the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study last week (March 12), as author and activist Andrea Dworkin spoke and signed copies of her latest book, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant, at the Cronkhite Living Room.
The urge to help others may not be universal, but it is unquestionably widespread, and, just as surely, its an urge that has been strengthened by the unforgettable events of six months ago. On March 27, Harvard employees will have the opportunity to attend the first Harvard Volunteer Fair to explore specific ways they can satisfy that urge. The fair is being held by the Harvard Administrators Forum and will take place in Loker Commons (lower level of Memorial Hall) from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Longtime benefactors Stanford and Norma Jean Calderwood have donated Mrs. Calderwoods extensive collection of Islamic art to Harvards Arthur M. Sackler Museum. The gift continues the Harvard University Art Museums leadership role as a recipient of major acquisitions for the purpose of teaching and research.
The University Committee on Human Rights Studies is launching a new Harvard initiative to assist scholars who face the risk of persecution in their home countries because of their beliefs, scholarship, or identity. The yearlong fellowship is intended to provide a safe environment for academics, writers, or independent intellectuals (employment at an academic institution is not required of fellowship candidates) to pursue scholarly work without fear of repression, violence, censorship, or punishment. The fellowship is not envisaged as an opportunity to mobilize political support on the issues giving rise to a scholars predicament.
Theres no cease-fire in the battle of the sexes, at least not at the genetic level, said pioneering genetics researcher and Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman in her Deans Lecture Series talk at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Monday afternoon (March 18).
At the Harvard Islamic Societys (HISs) weekly prayer service in Lowell Lecture Hall Friday (March 15), nearly 50 members of the Universitys Muslim community gathered, as they do most weeks. As the Muslims bowed and prayed, sitting stocking-footed on carpets aligned toward Mecca, a dozen others watched from the seats of Lowell, one even filming the service on a videocamera.
Aiming to foster a deeper understanding of the volunteer experience, the Harvard College Library (HCL) honored HCL employees who make lasting contributions to their communities, at a volunteer fair on Tuesday, March 12, in the Gutman Conference Center of Gutman Library. The daylong event, a collaborative effort between the HCL joint council and administration, showcased volunteer opportunities and workshops that detailed volunteers personal accounts.
There are people in Los Angeles, accountants and writers and teachers, who have become so accustomed to feeling the ground shake that they make a sport of trying to determine every earthquakes point of origin, betting that they can call it within a certain number of miles or dinner is on them. More often than not, they lose, and when their predictions do match those of seismologists, Michael Antolik would likely tell you, its probably a matter of good old-fashioned luck. Antolik, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is working to improve the locating of earthquakes. No, he cant move them from one place to another, but he is making them easier to find.
With a $50,000 planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Harvard University Librarys Weissman Preservation Center will embark on a one-year program to assess the preservation needs of photographic collections held in museums and libraries throughout the University. Harvards photographic holdings, which may number as many as 5 million objects, have been assessed on the collection level. But as Jan Merrill-Oldham, the Malloy-Rabinowitz Preservation Librarian, notes, We need to know these collections not only as historical evidence but as physical objects.
It was the first weekend signaling the coming of spring and what better way to spend it than shooting a film. On a balmy Saturday (March 9) followed by a crisp Sunday, a crew of 13 and a cast of five principal actors and seven extras assembled at the Busa Farm in Lexington to shoot the short film Scratching the Surface, one of the eight short films that will premiere at the Third Annual Dudley House Film and Video Festival.
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