‘New oxygen’: Visitor program will bring prominent mathematicians to Harvard

Harvard mathematicians are making an important addition.

The Department of Mathematics launched the Benedict H. Gross Distinguished Visitors Program earlier this year thanks to a new gift from William R. Hearst III ’72. Each year, the department will invite a prominent mathematician from another institution to teach, give lectures, and engage with students and faculty. The visitors will reside at Harvard for a minimum of one month and up to a full semester.

“This gift will make a tremendous difference to the range of math we’re able to bring to Harvard,” said Michael Hopkins, George Putnam Professor of Pure and Applied Math, who helped to establish the program during his time as department chair. “In 25 years, I think we’ll be able to look back and the legacy of this visitors program — the names of famous people who spent time at Harvard — will be its own treasure.”

The Distinguished Visitors Program was endowed by Hearst, a former math concentrator who named it honor of his former classmate Benedict “Dick” Gross,  George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, who also served as dean of Harvard College from 2003 to 2007.

“It’s about bringing new oxygen into the department — visitors who will be inspirational to the faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates,” said Hearst, chairman of the Hearst Corporation.

He recalled his own experience studying math in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the department was home to mathematicians such as Lars Ahlfors, Raoul Bott, Andrew Gleason, John Tate, Heisuke Hironaka, and David Mumford. “I looked at the Harvard math department as like Mount Olympus,” he recalled. Another vivid memory was a biology course taught by George Wald. Hearst said: “I remember him coming into the class and saying, ‘We’re going to have a slightly different class today, because it was announced yesterday that I won the Nobel Prize and we’re going to serve champagne in beakers to all the students.’”

In creating the distinguished visitor program, Hearst sought to ensure that Harvard continues to draw luminary scholars. “Harvard should always be that place where, if you’re interested in something — archaeology, English, or mathematics — you should feel like you are going to encounter the greatest thinkers of that field,” he said.

The Department of Mathematics has a storied history and its current faculty include winners of the Fields Medal, Nobel Prize, Wolf Prize, Shaw Prize, Steele Prize, Veblen Prize, Breakthrough Prize, and many other honors.

Hearst hopes the visitor program will add intellectual stimulus and help with recruitment of new faculty. The visiting scholars will be selected by the department chair and will alternate between world-renowned senior scholars and “highly promising” junior ones.

Last spring, Peter Sarnak, a professor of mathematics at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, was the first Gross Distinguished Visitor. “He’s just an extraordinary mathematician and  presence,” said Hopkins. “I couldn’t have dreamed higher for the first one.”

The department already has lined up its next two visitors: Robert Lazarsfeld (Stony Brook University) in 2026 and Daniel Litt (University of Toronto) in 2027.

Gross — now retired in California — said the excitement of a visiting scholar “keeps us all on our toes, and gives our students and postdocs another source of advice.”

“Will has been the greatest friend that the Harvard math department has ever had,” he said. “The reason his philanthropy has been so effective is that he understands how research in mathematics actually works.”