Portrait of Amos unveiled

A portrait of Harold Amos, who taught at Harvard for nearly half a century, was unveiled by the Harvard Foundation on Oct.4 at the Courtyard Café in the Warren Alpert Building at Harvard Medical School. Amos was a member of both the Medical School Faculty and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He was the first African American to chair a department at the Medical School. He chaired the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics twice, from 1968 to 1971 and from 1975 to 1978. Amos was a mentor to hundreds of students and many present-day faculty. For several years he served as the first director of the Minority Medical Faculty Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He died in 2003 at 84.

The framed, oil-on-canvas portrait was painted by Stephen Coit ’72. Among the friends, family, and colleagues present at the unveiling were Coit, S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation, and Howard Amos, brother of Harold Amos.