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November-December 2000
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Cambridge 02138 |
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| Mr. Agassiz, benefactor. Little thanks he got. |
| Harvard University Archives |
The Museum of Comparative Zoology lived on, under the leadership of his zoologist son, Alexander Agassiz, A.B. 1855, LL.D. '85, who was always referred to as "Mr." to distinguish him from "Professor" Agassiz. Alexander had grown up seeing his father racked by money worries, so at Harvard he applied himself to chemistry and geology as well as to the subject he preferred, zoology. His strategy succeeded spectacularly well, thanks to Michigan copper mines, and before long Mr. Agassiz was one of the wealthiest men in America.
Before his death in 1910 he poured millions of dollars into the MCZ, and in his will he endowed several research chairs. President Eliot's description of the MCZ's need for money (page 48) was unintended irony, and so is President Rudenstine's use of it, for the complaint is taken from the museum's annual report and expresses Alexander Agassiz's exasperation that his own contributions were not appreciated. The son's philanthropy, no less than the father's enthusiasm, deserves to be remembered.
Mary P. Winsor '65
Toronto
Editor's note: Winsor is the author of Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum (University of Chicago Press, 1991).
NO EXCUSES, EXERCISE
As a fitness instructor and personal trainer certified by the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America, I was dismayed by "Japan's No-Aerobics" (September-October, page 20). It mentioned the World Health Organization's study that ranked the Japanese as the "world's healthiest people" and cited research that suggests they have achieved this without the "no pain, no gain" ethic of fitness clubs. This article, I fear, will give people yet another excuse not to exercise.
Unlike the deep-fried-super-sized American diet, the Japanese diet generally is low in cholesterol, fat, and calories. This is probably the main contributing factor to their national health, not the fact that they shun exercise in favor of pounding drinks at strip clubs and bars.
Moreover, last year the Japan Society for the Study of Obesity warned of an epidemic of obesity among Japanese children and reported that the number of overweight Japanese has more than quadrupled in the past three decades. Here in the United States we are growing fatter and fatter. A recent surgeon general's report found that approximately 34 million American adults--one third of us--are overweight and 18 percent are obese, and 27 percent of American children are obese. Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable deaths in America.
Yes, getting massaged and lounging in a sauna are wonderful ways to relax. But they do not aid in the prevention of health problems like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, gout, gall bladder disease, or osteoarthritis. Obesity contributes heavily to all of these. Yet only 7 percent of Americans exercise even twice weekly. And of those who do start a fitness program, half drop out within three to six months.
Jennifer Lapierre, A.L.M. '97
Somerville, Mass.
REMEMBER HENRIETTA LARSON
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| Henrietta Larson in 1951 |
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Walter R. Fleischer/Harvard University Archives |
I am just now catching up with the November-December 1999 issue. Its cover article (page 50), "Harvard's Womanless History," is subtitled "Completing the University's self-portrait." Not quite completing.
Although the article concentrates on the College, it does mention Alice Hamilton at the Medical School. But it makes no mention of Henrietta Larson, who was at the Business School from 1928 to 1961. She went there as an associate in research and became an assistant professor in 1939 and associate professor in 1942, a rank she maintained until 1961. In that year, in which she retired, she was designated "emerita" and became the Business School's first woman full professor. In 1979, she received the Harvard Business School Association's award for distinguished service, the first woman to be so recognized.
During all her 33 years of that service, she was on one-year appointments, was not allowed to attend faculty meetings, and couldn't use the faculty dining room. When she gave a luncheon at the faculty club for a guest, she had to ask a male colleague to take the guest to the private dining room, to which the access was through the faculty dining room, while she went up the kitchen stairway.
I was at the Business School from 1945 to 1954. After I had been there several years as a research associate, my department proposed a faculty appointment for me, making me the third woman on the faculty. Dean Donald K. David came himself to my office and said, "I just want to be sure you understand that so long as I am dean, no woman will ever be on the tenure track." I was also the first woman to appear on a program of the HBS Association (as a member of a panel organized by Professor George Lombard). A letter was sent to all those scheduled to appear on that day inviting us to a luncheon meeting in the faculty dining room to finalize arrangements. Down in the lower left-hand corner of my letter was a hand-written note: "What are we going to do with you, a woman?"
Larson was one of the early scholars in the field of business history, and her work was seminal. I do think she deserves to be remembered by Harvard.
H. Ronken Lynton '41
Pittsboro, N.C.
HIGH-COST DISTANCE TEACHING
Distance learning is something we here in Montana know something about since everywhere in the state seems to be several hundred lonely miles from everywhere else. Distance learning has become a hot topic among educators here.
Clearly, the Internet is a marvelous tool for solo research and continues to have an enormously beneficial impact on isolated communities and individuals, but the use of the Internet and other forms of communication, such as "real-time" video conferencing, in an attempt to engage students in classes remotely has been, in my experience, mostly an abject failure.
"Distance Learning@Harvard.edu" (July-August, page 75) illustrates one of the main reasons for this. The picture caption shows "$200,000-worth of equipment" in the distance-education production room and explains that this represents a "basic facility." Perhaps in Cambridge every classroom, home, and conference room is suitably equipped with high-speed communication services and superior, state-of-the-art equipment, but I can assure you this is not yet the case in Montana.
Quality presentations require quality equipment, high connection speeds, and wide bandwidth to successfully communicate, present, and display material with any degree of sophistication or professionalism. Furthermore, unless they are unusually gifted, faculty and others who attempt to engage students through distance-learning technologies need to have extensive and expensive training.
I believe that much of the real value of faculty-student interaction cannot be successfully transmitted by most forms of "distance learning" as it now exists.
Thomas G. Lyman, M.Ed. '78
Billings, Mont.
HOT COPERNICUS
In an embarrassing but forgivable glitch, University Hall overlooked an announcement of my retirement from teaching this June, as well as the end of "The Astronomical Perspective," Harvard's "longest running course under the same management." In a valiant attempt at recovery, Harvard Magazine announced that I was "an expert on the...[nothing]."
The accidentally dropped words ["Errata," below] might have mentioned Copernicus, the Polish astronomer who introduced the heliocentric system in his De revolutionibus, published in 1543. When Christie's of London recently announced the auction of a copy of the book with estimated bids exceeding half a million dollars, thieves took notice. Presently, Christie's was asked if they were interested in another copy. "Not unless Professor Gingerich clears it," was their reply. The reason was that these books are not like peas in a pod. They were individually bound, and bear the tracks of their early owners. I've personally inspected nearly every known copy, and my detailed notes cover 276 examples. The marginal annotations help document the gradual acceptance of the Copernican system and record how comparatively unsuccessful the Roman decree of 1620 was in censoring the book, something the Inquisition never knew.
In due time I received via e-mail rather fuzzy images of a copy on offer from a Russian agent. It took only a few minutes to identify it as the property of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Not wishing to get mixed up with the Russian mafia, I kept a low profile, but eventually suggested to a St. Petersburg colleague that he should inquire about the book. Within a week the director of the library announced that 24 rare books were missing from their vault, including not one, but both their copies of De revolutionibus. Apparently, he had been unaware of the losses. Subsequently, rather to my chagrin, the Russian police announced that the discovery had been triggered "by a Harvard professor."
Owen Gingerich, Ph.D. '62
Professor of astronomy and the history of science emeritus
Cambridge
WHO'S A COMMUNIST?
It's disappointing that after we took in the Cubans; let them by-pass immigration quotas the rest of the world, from Irish to Afghani, have to live with; gave them free medical care and job and housing assistance that ordinary Americans never got; even let them become citizens, they now want to freeload on the efforts the U.S. makes to get back American property seized by Castro by including Cuban property seized by Castro ("Your Friend, Fidel," July-August, page 35, and letters responding to it, September-October, page 4).
Every country expropriates the property of its own citizens with impunity. Haven't you heard of death tax, civil forfeiture, and eminent domain? For example, if a family of 10 has owned a hard-scrabble farm since Revolutionary times, steadily resisting offers of a million dollars to sell to the adjacent ski resorts, when the widowed parent dies they have to pay 39 percent of the market value minus the exclusion, which is more than all of them put together have ever earned. They have to sell, and the million less the tax is not enough to buy homes for all 10, let alone send the children to Harvard or buy health insurance.
This redistribution of land from the poor to the rich is done to force less productive land into development, which produces bigger income, more jobs, and more taxes, assumed by politicians to make the country--or at least the government--stronger; in other words, for the exact reason Castro gives land from the rich to the poor.
Maybe we should cast out the mote in our own eye before accusing other countries of dictatorial communism.
Stephanie Muñoz
Los Altos Hills, Calif.
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS
Geoffrey Fowler's article on the "anti-thesis" ("The Undergraduate," July-August, page 87) was wonderful. My best friend came across it serendipitously and read it when we were in the midst of an incredible amount of emotion surrounding our own graduation from Stanford. She immediately called me to say, "Meg, you have to read this." I must admit I did indeed get shivers at the description of the group effort and friendship that brought Fowler's thesis together at last.
We were both touched by the fact that now that college is tangibly complete, that kind of community is a memory--and something we miss terribly. He wrote of the help and support and love he got from others so beautifully that even across the country at a very different university, we were so incredibly moved.
Megan Tompkins
Stanford
FIGHTING ABOUT RIGHTS
In "What I Read at War" (July-August, page 58), Chris Hedges writes that "I have heard Israeli settlers on the West Bank, for example, argue that Palestinian towns--towns that have been Muslim since the seventh century--belong to them because it says so in the Bible," and describes this claim as "sophistry" and "a dubious account of ancient history." One wonders, first, why claims based on the Bible are "sophistry" while claims based on the history of the Arab conquest of Palestine are manifestly valid. Second, Hedges's statement of the Palestinian claim is itself dubious ancient history. At the time of the Arab conquest the majority of the population of Palestine was Christian, and it is universally believed by historians that it took centuries (with a reversal of the trend during the Crusader period) for the majority to become Muslim. Nothing, of course, is at stake here for the actual claims of the Palestinians today: their national cause is purportedly unified by land and blood, not faith. If history matters, and most human beings think it does, then it matters that that history should be retold as accurately as possible. The lists of historical rights and wrongs in national conflicts are always lengthy, and wearying. But the alternative to arguing, and fighting, about the rights of the first possessor is to preserve forever by brute force the claims of the last possessor--a maxim even more despairing of any hope of justice on this earth.
Michael S. Kochin '89
Lecturer, Department of Political Science
Tel Aviv University
"What I Read at War" is the best-written, most moving, most disturbing article on war that I have read in many years. It should be required reading for all our elected representatives in Washington, as well as for secretaries of defense and state. Thank you for printing it.
George H. Wolfson '37
East Hampton, Conn.
ERRATA
The Editors regret three errors in the September-October issue.
* In Edward Tenner's article about shoes, "Lasting Impressions," six lines of text disappeared between pages 39 and 40 as a result of a production error by our printer. (N.B. Tenner is the author of Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences.) The text should have read:
"....The resulting United Shoe Machinery Company, incorporated in 1899, had a virtual monopoly of the technology for the leading types of American shoe production. Winslow ran the company, and the retired McKay's interest in it was one of America's great fortunes.
"Reformers soon assailed the Shoe Trust. A shoe manufacturer might still, with some difficulty, get every necessary machine from some other supplier, but few independent domestic makers were left."
* An in-house change in text caused a news item about Owen J. Gingerich ("Brevia," page 83) to lose its last three words, leaving readers in doubt about the nature of his expertise. He is an expert on the "work of Copernicus" (see "Hot Copernicus," above).
* Finally, a typographical mistake not caught in proofreading caused the middle initial of Walter C. Klein '39 to be misstated in the list of Hiram S. Hunn Memorial Schools and Scholarships Award winners (page 90). We apologize for this gaffe.
The
late Hugh Brooking Clark of England left the class of '42 to join
the British Army in North Africa, where he might possibly have
seen examples of the north Saharan boot with the Goodyear sole
pictured on page 43. Either way, he, doubtless influenced by his
family's business, conceived the idea that the world needed a
tough boot that abjured polishing and was easy to manufacture.
He called his resulting design the "brothel creeper," he explained
to me. It involved an upper of undyed rough leather and a sole
of a buff-colored, wear-resistant rubber. The novel part of its
structure lay in the way the two were stitched together. His pattern
called for what we surgeons term an "everting suture," which turned
the leather outward to meet the sole, as contrasted with the conventional
shoe in which it turns inward.
