Year: 2006

At 23 years, CityStep is older than its participants. Run entirely by undergraduates, the program partners young Harvard students with younger Cambridge public school students. Together, they dance the year away while exploring personal growth goals such as community, self-expression, creativity, and self-confidence.

Alina Payne, professor of the history of art and architecture, has received the 2006 Max Planck Research Award, for outstanding work in art history. This annual award, Germanys equivalent to the Nobel Prize, recognizes two scholars – one working in Germany and one working abroad – with a stipend of 750,000 euros each. This honor,…

Dental Service of Massachusetts (DSM) – the nonprofit corporation doing business as Delta Dental of Massachusetts – recently announced that it is expanding its Workforce Development Initiative with a $5 million Legacy of Leadership endowment to the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (Dental School). The gift will help address critical oral health needs in the…

HLS auction to support public interest positions One of Harvard Law School’s most exciting traditions, the annual public interest auction, will be held this evening (April 6). The student-run auction,…

Though the much-anticipated results of Harvards first-ever Team Fitness Challenge (TFC) are in, it would seem that the more than 300 Harvard affiliates who participated in the University-wide challenge all came out victorious, or at least in better shape. Taken together, the 36 teams made up of Harvard staff, students, and faculty accrued nearly 261,000…

Seismologists at Harvard University and Columbia University have found an unexpected offshoot of global warming: glacial earthquakes in which Manhattan-sized glaciers lurch unexpectedly, yielding temblors up to magnitude 5.1 on the moment-magnitude scale, which is similar to the Richter scale. Glacial earthquakes in Greenland, the researchers found, are most common in July and August, and…

The Harvard Corporation has launched the search for a successor to President Lawrence H. Summers, who recently announced his decision to step down as president of the University at the end of the 2005-06 academic year. Derek Bok has agreed to serve as interim president from July 1 until a new president assumes office.

President Lawrence H. Summers will hold office hours for students in his Massachusetts Hall office on the following dates: Thursday, April 20, 4-5 p.m. Thursday, May 11, 4-5 p.m. Sign-up…

April 29, 1636 – John Harvard marries Ann Sadler, sister of the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge University. Just over a year later, they emigrate to New England. April 24,…

Harvard collected a record $38,272 for the American Cancer Societys annual Daffodil Days fundraiser this year, topping 2005s total by $2,840. On the big day (March 20), more than 1,200 of the 4,866 dazzling bouquets sold were donated and delivered to area hospitals, including Cambridge, Mt. Auburn, and Youville hospitals, the Sancta Maria Nursing Facility,…

Jim Lehrer, award-winning television journalist, presidential debate moderator, and prolific novelist, will be the principal speaker at Afternoon Exercises during Harvard Universitys 355th Commencement, to be held on June 8.

Sanford L. Palay died on August 5, 2002, at the age of 83, and was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

Two Harvard affiliates recently joined 14 other graduate students from North America and Asia to be named 2006 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award recipients. The award is sponsored by the Basic Sciences Division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and nominations are solicited internationally with winners selected on the basis of…

Magnus Lindberg is a major presence in the European music scene he is particularly admired for his orchestral scores. In his native Finland, he has the reputation of a latter-day Sibelius in London, his compositions are beginning to be a permanent part of the new music repertoire and in the United States, the Los Angeles…

George W. Mackey, the Landon T. Clay Professor of Mathematics Emeritus, died March 15 of complications from pneumonia. He was 90.

Winslow Homers moody watercolor Adirondack Lake is one of the treasures to be (re-)unveiled at the Fogg Museum on April 8 in the exhibit American Watercolors and Pastels, 1875-1950. For story and more images, see page 17.

In April 1775, minutemen and patriot troops began pouring into the Boston area to surround the British army and contain it in the city. In April 2006, Harvard Extension School students are poring over centuries-old documents to advance our knowledge of what has become known as the Siege of Boston.

It is the beginning of class and it is Nias turn to say what clay means to her. She glances around the ceramics studio at the circle of teenage girls. Theyre standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a table covered with pristine clay tablets just waiting for hands to mold them. What I like…

With more than a billion people and an economy that has been growing at 7 percent or more for the past decade, India is poised to become an economic powerhouse. Indeed, the nations impact on global business is already being felt, as over 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies have outsourced a portion of their…

Last week, in public schools across Massachusetts, students were racking their brains to show what they know on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test. The test results, which will be released in the fall, will provide data that show students proficiency in English language arts, mathematics, and science and technology.

Professor John Coatsworth, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), recently announced that the center will open an office in São Paulo, Brazil, on July 1. According to Coatsworth, the purpose of the office will be to strengthen ties between Harvard and Brazilian academic and research institutions, increase opportunities for Brazilians…

Anne Herbst leaned over the seawall in the town of Hulls Gunrock section. She raised her voice over the stiff wind blowing off the ocean, against which the small knot of four Kennedy School students pulled their overcoats tighter.

The Gleitsman Foundation, the nonprofit organization that recognizes and encourages social activism, presented its 2006 Citizen Activist Awards this week at a ceremony hosted by David Gergen, public service professor at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) and director of its Center for Public Leadership. The April 3 ceremony was held in the Taubman Building…

In an effort to address one of the worlds most pressing public problems – sustainable development – Harvards Center for International Development (CID) and the Ministry for the Environment and Territory of the Italian Republic will work together to create the Fund for Sustainable Development at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).

Morning Exercises To accommodate the increasing number of those wishing to attend Harvard’s Commencement Exercises, the following guidelines are proposed to facilitate admission into Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement Morning: •…

Sluggers pour it on at Cornell Harvard baseball tallied 26 runs in a doubleheader against host Cornell this past Sunday (April 2) to capture its fourth- and fifth-straight victories. The…

Nearly a year to the day of the Harvard mens lacrosse teams 9-8 loss in the Mile High City, the Crimson squad – hosting the University of Denver on April 1 – avoided being cast the fool a second time around, clipping the Pioneers, 8-7. No small feat either, considering the Cambridge crew withstood 44…

HHMI awards renewal grant to Harvard professor Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Biology Richard Losick recently joined seven other professors nationwide in receiving renewal grants from the Howard Hughes Medical…

Many – if not most – people believe that prayer will help you through a medical crisis such as heart bypass surgery. If a large group of people outside yourself, your family, and your friends add their prayers, that should be even more helpful, or so such reasoning goes.

Neuroscientist Takao Hensch, whose pathbreaking work examines how sensory experience shapes brain circuitry during critical periods of early development, will join Harvard Universitys Faculty of Arts and Sciences as professor of molecular and cellular biology, starting in the 2006-07 academic year.