Articles by Department: Vita

On a chilly autumn day in 1911, Stuart Chase entered the Boston Public Library and, finding a seat in the economics section, composed a personal…

Totally deaf and blind from the age of 19 months, world famous at seven for having learned to read, write, and communicate through the finger…

Thinking himself near death in 1905, Evelyn Baring, the first Lord Cromer, began a series of "Biographical Notes," written partly that…

In a career spanning nearly six decades, Walter Channing provided the medical skills and compassionate care women sought as they faced the pain…

In1937, John Maynard Keynes had a serious heart attack. His British doctors more or less gave up on him and prescribed indefinite bed rest. But…

In the fall of 1927, the small group of black students at Harvard learned of the impending arrival of an exceptionally gifted new black graduate…

One of the most distinguished and prolific mathematicians in the medieval tradition of Arabic Islamic science, al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham…

"I have not wandered very far afield,” wrote Henry Francis du Pont, A.B. 1903, in his fiftieth reunion report. With characteristic…

Seventy years ago, on April 13, 1933, a debate took place in the House of Commons over how the British government should respond to the new Nazi…

Crack! Paul Cabot pulled his ROTC rifle back from his dorm’s open window and surveyed the damage. Students had been holding a dance in the Yard…

On June 2, 1922, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts received from the Anne Hutchinson Memorial Association and the State Federation of Women’s…

Student revolutionary, political refugee, gymnastics instructor, radical abolitionist clergyman: German-born Karl Follen was an unusual Harvard…

One hundred years ago, the Macmillan Company published The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains, a novel about an unnamed Wyoming cattleman. The…

The Japanese woman who wrote the extraordinary Tale of Genji a thousand years ago is known only by a nickname. Her given name went unrecorded…

Jones connects at the Flintridge Golf Club in Los Angeles in 1931. Photograph courtesy Sidney L. Matthew. Photomontage by Bartek Malysa…