Year: 2007

  • Nation & World

    KSG student named ‘Person of the Year’ by ABC News

    Rye Barcott, a student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and founder of a nonprofit that works to improve the quality of life in one of Africa’s largest slums, has been named a 2006 “Person of the Year” by ABC News.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    AMS awards Veblen Prize to Harvard professor

    The American Mathematical Society (AMS) awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry last month to William Casper Graustein Professor of Mathematics Peter Kronheimer (along with his collaborator Tomasz Mrowka of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Given every three years, the Veblen Prize is one of the field’s highest honors for work in geometry or topology.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Faculty Council

    At its eighth meeting of the year on Jan. 24, the Faculty Council was joined by Christopher Gordon and Kathy Spiegelman of the Allston Development Group for a discussion of the Allston Master Plan, and heard an overview of the report of the Task Force on Teaching and Career Development from Dean Theda Skocpol. The…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Franklin L. Ford

    Franklin L. Ford served as a major participant in this Faculty’s business throughout his career, as Assistant and Associate Professor, Allston Burr Senior Tutor of Lowell House, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, and as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from fall l962 through spring 1970.

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Richard Musgrave, renowned pioneer of public finance, dies at 96

    Richard A. Musgrave, widely regarded as the founder of modern public finance and an adviser on fiscal policy and taxation to governments from Washington to Bogotá to Tokyo, died Monday (Jan. 15) in Santa Cruz, Calif.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Orlov Rubinow, former Harvard University Press editor, dies at 81

    Betty Ann Orlov Rubinow, 81, formerly of Cambridge, Mass., and Stowe, Vt., died unexpectedly from complications of pneumonia on Jan. 5 at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Tucson, Ariz., where she had lived with her husband, Merrill Rubinow.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Elkan Blout, former HSPH academic affairs dean, 87

    Elkan Blout, a former dean for academic affairs at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), National Medal of Science winner, and a leading contributor to the development of instant film, died on Dec. 20, 2006, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The cause was pneumonia. He was 87.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HSPH’s Andrew Spielman dies at 76

    When Andrew Spielman was a graduate student in a malaria lab at Johns Hopkins University in 1952, his future was anything but certain. The use of DDT and other insecticides suggested a dramatic curtailing of the spread of mosquitoes – the carriers of the malaria pathogen and additional diseases. But, true to form, the insects…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    KSG community pays tribute to Frank Stanton

    Broadcast legend Frank Stanton, longtime president of CBS and a former chair of the Kennedy School’s Visiting Committee, is being remembered by the Kennedy School community following his death Dec. 24, 2006, in Boston. He was 98 years old.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Shorenstein Center names spring fellows, visiting faculty

    The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, located at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, recently announced its spring fellows.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Institute of Politics announces six spring fellows

    Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the Kennedy School of Government, has announced the selection of an experienced group of individuals for its spring resident fellowship program. Resident fellows interact with students, participate in the intellectual life of the community, and pursue individual studies or projects throughout an academic semester.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Renewable electricity effort receives Roy Award

    The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) has announced that the 2007 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership will go to the Hybrid Systems for Rural Electrification in Africa (HSREA). The HSREA project provides reliable, renewable electricity to rural African villages through a system of solar panel technology combined with modified diesel motors running on pure…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Ten physicians awarded grants to focus on patient safety

    Ten physicians from a cross-section of Harvard teaching hospitals have been awarded a total of $500,000 in grants by CRICO/RMF – the patient safety and medical malpractice insurance company owned by and serving the Harvard-affiliated medical community.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Ash Institute awards faculty grants

    The Roy and Lila Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University has awarded $245,000 in grants for faculty research and retreat in 2007, director Gowher Rizvi recently announced. Each of the nine projects funded supports the goals of the institute by seeking to advance good government and to strengthen democratic institutions worldwide…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HUAM announces Craigen Bowen Fellowship

    The Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM) recently announced the establishment of the Craigen Bowen Fellowship. The new fellowship, made possible through the generous gift of two anonymous donors, is designated to provide the salary, benefits, and a travel/research stipend to a young, advanced-level conservation professional who focuses on works on paper and who is beginning…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Modern Language Association honors Gates with Hubbell Medal

    The American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association (MLA) last month presented its highest professional award to Henry Louis Gates Jr., the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro American Research.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    MAC gears up for March closing, start of renovation

    The Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) will close for renovations the week of March 19 and will remain closed through the end of October. This scheduled closing has been set back from the originally published February date to help provide greater flexibility in the relocation of existing programs.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Portrait of former Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett is unveiled

    The Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations has unveiled a seventh portrait in its Minority Portraiture Project.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Winnie returns to take helm of Office of International Programs

    Students looking to study abroad have a new ally as Catherine Hutchison Winnie takes the reins of the Office of International Programs (OIP) this month. No stranger to Harvard, Winnie spent two years of her childhood in Winthrop House as the daughter of former House masters William Hutchison and Virginia Quay Hutchison, and returned as…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sports briefs

    Chu ignites comeback victory; Jewish Sports Hall of Fame set to honor Altchek; Preston propels grapplers past Army; Aquatic life lessons

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Way to go: ovations, victory ease center’s exit

    Playing in his final game in a Harvard uniform against visiting Brown this past Saturday (Jan. 27), hugely productive big man Brian Cusworth ’07 fouled out with just 1:34 remaining. With Cusworth tied to the bench, the Bears wasted little time exploiting the shot-blocking tyrant’s absence, cutting an 81-75 deficit to a two-point differential with…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard submits multi-decade master plan framework for Allston

    Harvard University today is filing a proposed Institutional Master Plan with the City of Boston detailing physical plans for an interdisciplinary campus in Allston. The Master Plan is a framework for the University’s future physical and academic growth and includes potential locations for new spaces for science, professional schools, arts and culture, and housing, as…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New York artist expresses long passion for polar exploration

    They are odds and ends of lives long past, lived in the cold and ice of the world’s polar regions. They are bits and pieces that give a feeling as much as they tell a story: an old photograph here, a line drawing there, a braided ribbon, a newspaper headline. The collages lining the walls…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Two from Harvard win science medals

    The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will honor 18 individuals, including two Harvard researchers, for their fundamental contributions to human knowledge. Harvard’s award recipients are Randy Lee Buckner, professor of psychology, and Richard M. Losick, Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Biology.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Marathon running can damage a heart

    Running 26.2 miles is not for the faint of heart. Abnormalities in heart structure and function were found in men and women who ran the Boston Marathon in 2004 and 2005 by Harvard Medical School researchers.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Big brains better for birds

    As you might guess, big-brained birds survive better in the wild than those less cerebral for their size. Scientists guessed that too, but they had to prove it to themselves.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Brain pollution: Common chemicals are damaging young minds

    Learning disabilities. Cerebral palsy. Mental retardation. A “silent pandemic” of these and other neurodevelopmental disorders is under way owing to industrial chemicals in the environment that impair brain development in fetuses and young children. That’s the conclusion of a data analysis by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Mount Sinai…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mystery muscles make mightier mice

    Scientists have muscled in on a genetic switch that allows mice to run longer and faster. Humans possess the same switch, so the discovery might open new paths to treating muscle-wasting diseases and building better bodies.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    World’s largest flower evolved from family of much tinier blooms

    The plant with the world’s largest flower – typically a full meter across, with a bud the size of a basketball – evolved from a family of plants whose blossoms are nearly all tiny, botanists write this week in the journal Science. Their genetic analysis of rafflesia reveals that it is closely related to a…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sengupta wins $4.1 million ‘Era of Hope’ award for breast cancer advances

    An assistant professor of medicine at Harvard has won a $4.1 million “Era of Hope” scholar award from the U.S. Defense Department’s Breast Cancer Research Program in support of his cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research aimed at fighting breast and other types of cancer.

    3 minutes