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Three will receive 2024 harvard medal.

In recognition of their extraordinary service

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

The Harvard Alumni Association has announced that Scott A. Abell ’72, Katherine N. Lapp, and M. Lee Pelton, Ph.D. ’84, will receive the 2024 Harvard Medal.

First awarded in 1981, the  Harvard Medal  recognizes extraordinary service to the University in areas that include teaching, fundraising, leadership, innovation, administration, and volunteerism. Alumni, former faculty and staff, and members of organizations affiliated with the University are eligible for consideration. The medals will be presented to recipients on  Harvard Alumni Day on May 31.

Scott A. Abell

One of the University’s most dynamic and valued alumni leaders, Scott Abell has devoted more than three decades in service to Harvard. He has brought his love and deep knowledge of the institution to a variety of executive roles, including president of the Harvard Board of Overseers, president of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA), and dean for development for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

Growing up in a family of modest means, Abell overcame childhood polio to become a multisport athlete in high school. He was encouraged by a Cleveland-area alumnus to apply to Harvard College, enrolling in 1968. After graduating, Abell founded and served as chair and CEO of Abell & Associates, leading its work in financial services and healthcare consulting.

Recognizing the impact that Harvard and its alumni community have had on his own life, Abell has been dedicated to strengthening alumni connection. During his 2000–2001 term as HAA president, he employed his trademark diplomacy to develop relationships within the University and with alumni worldwide, leading a comprehensive strategy that helped reshape the HAA.

In 2004, Abell came out of retirement to lead FAS fundraising activities as associate vice president and dean for development. As a member of the Board of Overseers from 2012 to 2018, Abell chaired its committee on institutional policy and served on its executive committee, nominating committee, and the governing boards’ Joint Committee on Alumni Affairs and Development. In his final year, he led the Overseers as president.

Prior volunteer roles include president of the Harvard Club of Northeast Ohio, where he also chaired its Schools and Scholarships Committee; HAA regional director; and vice chair of the Harvard College Fund executive committee. He received the HAA Award in 2003 in recognition of his work on behalf of the alumni community. 

Katherine N. Lapp

Through skillful leadership and perseverance, Katherine “Katie” Lapp expertly guided Harvard’s administrative and operational functions for 13 years. As executive vice president, she built a resilient organization that was able to weather times of uncertainty, including the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring that the University could continue its core mission of teaching and learning.

As a member of the president’s senior management team, Lapp was responsible for areas in finance, administration, human resources, and capital planning. She oversaw Harvard’s development efforts in Allston, including the creation of the Science and Engineering Complex, a proposed residential project at Barry’s Corner, and the Enterprise Research Campus. Lapp helped steer Harvard’s campus sustainability goals — notably meeting initial targets of a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2016 — and co-chaired the Presidential Committee on Sustainability.

In 2019, as the pandemic began to unfold, she played an integral role in the University’s response, managing its surveillance and tracing procedures; the technology infrastructure that enabled remote learning; and the return of students, staff, and faculty to campus.

Lapp joined Harvard in 2009 from the University of California at the height of the recession, bringing stability and vision to planning and budgeting across the University as she worked to strengthen financial management practices and modernize administrative operations and risk management protocols. She stepped down from her role in 2022.

Prior to Harvard, Lapp served as executive director and CEO for New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, as well as director of criminal justice and commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services in New York State.

Lapp continues to sit on the boards of the Museum of Fine Arts, Mount Auburn Hospital, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and the Cambridge Public Library Foundation.

M. Lee Pelton

A distinguished academic and civic leader, Lee Pelton has dedicated his career to advancing social justice and expanding educational opportunities — a calling that has driven him as a college president for 23 years and now as president and CEO of the Boston Foundation.  

A steadfast Harvard volunteer, Pelton served on the Graduate School Alumni Association Council from 1996 to 2005 and on the Board of Overseers from 2000 to 2006, including one year as vice chair of the executive committee. He also served on visiting committees for Harvard College, Harvard Library, and Athletics, as well as the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility.

The grandson of sharecroppers, Pelton was the first in his family to go to college, attending Wichita State University before pursuing a doctorate in English and American literature at Harvard, where he was senior tutor at Winthrop House and a lecturer on English. After leaving Harvard, he held decanal roles at Colgate University and Dartmouth College.

In 1998, he was appointed president of Willamette University. There he increased the school’s ranking as a top-tier liberal arts college, established a college access program for historically underrepresented youth, and earned the university inclusion in President Barack Obama’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.

In 2011, he became president of Emerson College, where he increased faculty, enhanced student body diversity, developed national and global programs, and emerged as a powerful voice on social issues. In the wake of the Sandy Hook mass shooting, he rallied over 250 college and university presidents to call for gun legislation. After the murder of George Floyd in June 2020, Pelton’s impassioned written address to the Emerson community went viral as he candidly relayed his own experiences with racial profiling.

Since 2021, Pelton has led the Boston Foundation, committed to equity and to closing the gaps on the region’s greatest disparities for historically marginalized communities.

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The Many Combinatorial Legacies of Richard P. Stanley: Immense Birthday Glory of the Epic Catalonian Rascal

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SEMINARS, HARVARD-MIT COMBINATORICS SEMINAR

SEMINARS, NUMBER THEORY SEMINAR

SEMINARS, OPEN NEIGHBORHOOD SEMINAR

CMSA ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY IN STRING THEORY SEMINAR CMSA EVENT, SEMINARS, CMSA EVENT

Organizers: David Jerison, Paul Seidel, Nike Sun (MIT); Denis Auroux, Mark Kisin, Lauren Williams, Horng-Tzer Yau, Shing-Tung Yau (Harvard).

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Harvard University Mathematics, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Harvard University is committed to maintaining a safe and healthy educational and work environment in which no member of the University community is, on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity, excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination in any University program or activity. More information can be found here.

CMSA EVENT CMSA Quantum Matter in Math and Physics Seminar: Discrete geometry and the modular bootstrap

Speaker: Henry Cohn – MIT and Microsoft

In this talk, I’ll discuss the remarkable connections between the modular bootstrap and sphere packing or ground state problems discovered by Hartman, Mazáč, and Rastelli in 2019, with a focus on opportunities for further progress.

CMSA EVENT CMSA Member Seminar: Phase diagram and confining strings in a minimal model of nematopolar matter

Speaker: Farzan Vafa – Harvard CMSA

We investigate a minimal model of a nematopolar system. We analytically uncover a phase diagram consisting of a locked phase where the polar order and nematic order are locked, and unlocked phases which could be ordered or disordered. In particular, we develop two complementary perspectives on the locked phase: (i) the nematic order induces polar order, (ii) in the locked phase, all 1/2 integral nematic topological charges are confined. In particular, a polar +1 defect fattens from a point along a string with constant tension and confines a pair of nematic +1/2 defects at its ends.

Friday, Apr. 5th at 12pm, with lunch, lounge at CMSA (20 Garden Street).

Also by Zoom:   https://harvard.zoom.us/j/92410768363

HARVARD-MIT COMBINATORICS SEMINAR Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Szemer\’edi’s theorem and nilsequences

Speaker: James Leng – UCLA

Suppose A is a subset of the natural numbers with positive density. A classical result in additive combinatorics, Szemeredi’s theorem, states that for each positive integer k, A must have an arithmetic progression of nonzero common difference of length k.

In this talk, we shall discuss various quantitative refinements of this theorem and explain the various ingredients that recently led to the best quantitative bounds for this theorem. This is joint work with Ashwin Sah and Mehtaab Sawhney.

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For more info, see  https://math.mit.edu/combin/

CONFERENCE Current Developments in Mathematics 2024

Current Developments in Mathematics 2024

April 5-6, 2024, harvard university science center, friday—lecture hall c, saturday—lecture hall a, register here.

• Daniel Cristofaro-Gardiner – University of Maryland
• Samit Dasgupta – Duke University
• Jiaoyang Huang – University of Pennsylvania
• Daniel Litt – University of Toronto
• Lisa Piccirillo – MIT/University of Texas

Funding application is closed as of March 12.

Download PDF for a detailed schedule of lectures and events.

SEMINARS Probability Seminar: Lily Reeves, Caltech

Speaker: Lily Reeves – Caltech

Abstract TBA

SEMINARS Probability Seminar: Distances in hierarchical percolation

Speaker: Lily Reeves – California Institute of Technology

Hierarchical percolation is a toy model for percolation on Z^d that, much like percolation on Euclidean lattices, is expected to exhibit mean-field behavior in high dimensions, non-mean-field behavior in low dimensions, and logarithmic corrections to mean-field behavior at the upper-critical dimension. The hierarchical lattice allows for a renormalization group—style analysis which is currently inaccessible for percolation on Euclidean lattices. Building on Hutchcroft’s work on cluster volumes in all dimensions, we examine the distribution of the chemical distance, extremal distance (also known as the effective resistance), and pivotal distance in high dimensions and the upper-critical dimension. Joint work with Tom Hutchcroft.

https://harvard.zoom.us/j/94035561793?pwd=VUZ3aml1eVovb2tRc1h6OS9sdlh6UT09

Password: 849612

HARVARD-MIT ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY SEMINAR Harvard-MIT Algebraic Geometry Seminar: The Dual Complex of a G-variety

Speaker: Louis Esser – Princeton University

We introduce a new invariant of G-varieties, the dual complex, which roughly measures how divisors in the complement of the free locus intersect. We show that the top homology group of this complex is an equivariant birational invariant of G-varieties. As an application, we demonstrate the non-linearizability of certain large abelian group actions on smooth hypersurfaces in projective space of any dimension and degree at least 3.

For more information, please see https://researchseminars.org/seminar/harvard-mit-ag-seminar

NUMBER THEORY SEMINAR Number Theory Seminar: Vanishing of Selmer groups for Siegel modular forms

Speaker: Sam Mundy – Princeton University

Let pi be a cuspidal automorphic representation of $\mathrm{Sp}_{2n}$ over $\mathbb{Q}$ which is holomorphic discrete series at infinity, and $\chi$ a Dirichlet character. Then one can attach to $\pi$ an orthogonal $p$-adic Galois representation $\rho$ of dimension $2n+1$. Assume $\rho$ is irreducible, that pi is ordinary at $p$, and that $p$ does not divide the conductor of $\chi$. I will describe work in progress which aims to prove that the Bloch–Kato Selmer group attached to the twist of $\rho$ by $\chi$ vanishes, under some mild ramification assumptions on $\pi$; this is what is predicted by the Bloch–Kato conjectures.

The proof uses “ramified Eisenstein congruences” by constructing $p$-adic families of Siegel cusp forms degenerating to Klingen Eisenstein series of nonclassical weight, and using these families to construct ramified Galois cohomology classes for the Tate dual of the twist of $\rho$ by $\chi$.

For more info, see https://ashvin-swaminathan.github.io/home/NTSeminar.html

HARVARD-MIT COMBINATORICS SEMINAR Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: The combinatorics of poset associahedra When

Speaker: Andrew Sack – UCLA

For a poset $P$, Galashin introduced a simple polytope $\mathscr A(P)$ called the $P$-associahedron. We will discuss a simple realization of poset associahedra and show that the $f$-vector of $\mathscr A(P)$ depends only on the comparability graph of $P$. Furthermore, we will show that when $P$ is a rooted tree, the 1-skeleton of $\mathscr A(P)$ orients to a lattice, answering a question of Laplante-Anfossi. These lattices naturally generalize both the weak order on permutations and the Tamari lattice. This is joint work with Colin Defant and Son Ngyuen.

CMSA EVENT CMSA Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar: Mirror symmetry for fibrations and degenerations of K3 surfaces

Speaker: Alan Thompson – Loughborough University

THURSDAY SEMINAR SEMINAR Thursday Seminar: Bootstrapping to cyclotomic spectra

Speaker: Ishan Levy – Harvard

Last time we saw how to identify THH(ell^hZ)times V with THH(ell^BZ)times V at the level of spectra with Frobenius, for V a type 2 complex. I will explain how this spectrum level statement can be upgraded to the level of cyclotomic spectra, after replacing V with an arbitrary type 3 complex, and the Z-action by p^kZ for large k. I will then explain the Bockstein argument that shows that for a large enough k, the coassembly map for the T(2)-homology of TC(ell^hp^kZ) behaves as if the action were trivial. This finishes the proof that the T(2)-local TC of ell^{hp^kZ} is not K(2)-local.

OTHER MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT EVENTS Special Lecture: Equivariant Topology in Combinatorics

Speaker: Dora Woodruff – Harvard AB 2024

My thesis discusses a bridge between equivariant topology and combinatorics. The kind of problem I look at is an inherently discrete problem which can be solved by translating the problem into showing the nonexistence of a certain map of topological spaces. We will see examples stemming from graph theory, such as the Lovász Conjecture discrete geometry, such as the Randakumar and Rao Conjecture, and general combinatorics.

OTHER MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT EVENTS Special Lecture: The Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem and Almost Complex Spheres

Speaker: Dhruv Goel – Harvard AB 2024

When is a real smooth manifold secretly a complex manifold? For this, it is necessary, but not sufficient, for the manifold’s tangent bundle to be a complex vector bundle, a condition called being “almost complex”. In this talk, I will give several examples of complex, almost complex, and (orientable, even-dimensional) not-even-almost complex manifolds. I will then discuss how the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem can be used to show that certain smooth manifolds are  not  almost complex, focusing on the case of the twisted Dirac operator on spinor bundles on spheres.

CMSA EVENT CMSA Member Seminar: 3d quantum trace map

Speaker: Sunghyuk Park – Harvard

I will speak about my recent work (joint with Sam Panitch) constructing the 3d quantum trace map, a homomorphism from the Kauffman bracket skein module of an ideally triangulated 3-manifold to its (square root) quantum gluing module, thereby giving a precise relationship between the two quantizations of the character variety of ideally triangulated 3-manifolds. Our construction is based on the study of stated skein modules and their behavior under splitting, especially into face suspensions.

Friday, Apr. 12th at 12pm, with lunch, lounge at CMSA (20 Garden Street).

CMSA EVENT CMSA Member Seminar: Global weak solutions of 3+1 dimensional vacuum Einstein equations

Speaker: Puskar Mondal – CMSA

It is important to understand if the `solutions’ of non-linear evolutionary PDEs persist for all time or become extinct in finite time through the blow-up of invariant entities. Now the question of this global existence or finite time blow up in the PDE settings is well defined if the regularity of the solution is specified. Most physically interesting scenarios demand control of the point-wise behavior of the solution. Unfortunately, most times this level of regularity is notoriously difficult to obtain for non-linear equations. In this talk, I will discuss very low regularity solutions namely distributional (or weak) solutions of vacuum Einsten’s equations in 3+1 dimensions. I prove that on a globally hyperbolic spacetime foliated by closed connected oriented negative Yamabe slices, weak solutions of the Einstein equations exist for all time. The monotonicity of a Coercive Entity called reduced Hamiltonian that controls the minimum regularity required for the weak solution is employed. This is in the same spirit as Leray’s global weak solutions of Navier-Stokes in 3+1 dimensions and the first result in the context of Einstein equations.

OTHER MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT EVENTS Special Lecture: Algebraicity, Transcendence, and Periods

Speaker: Salim Tayou – Harvard University

Transcendental numbers form a mysterious and large class of complex numbers: they are defined as complex numbers that are not the solution of a polynomial equation, and include the numbers pi and e, for example. Within this class, we find the periods that were first studied by Newton and Kepler in the context of celestial mechanics, and which present many curious properties that are the subject of very active research. In this talk, I will give a glimpse of almost 500 years of history of periods, right up to the most recent developments.

HARVARD-MIT COMBINATORICS SEMINAR Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: On the evolution of structure in triangle-free graphs

Speaker: Will Perkins – Georgia Tech

Erdos-Kleitman-Rothschild proved that the number of triangle-free graphs on n vertices is asymptotic to the number of bipartite graphs; or in other words, a typical triangle-free graph is a random subgraph of a nearly balanced complete bipartite graph. Osthus-Promel-Taraz extended this result to much lower densities: when m >(\sqrt{3}/4 +eps) n^{3/2} \sqrt{\log n}, a typical triangle-free graph with m edges is a random subgraph of size m from a nearly balanced complete bipartite graph (and this no longer holds below this threshold). What do typical triangle-free graphs at sparser densities look like and how many of them are there? We consider what we call the “ordered” regime, in which typical triangle-free graphs are not bipartite but do align closely with a nearly balanced bipartition. In this regime we prove asymptotic formulas for the number of triangle-free graphs and give a precise probabilistic description of their structure. Joint work with Matthew Jenssen and Aditya Potukuchi.

OTHER MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT EVENTS Special Lecture: Symmetry in quantum field theory

Speaker: Daniel S. Freed – Harvard University

The notion of an abstract group encapsulates and illuminates concrete manifestations of symmetry. Recently in quantum field theory there have been discussions of “higher symmetry” and “noninvertiblesymmetry” and their applications.  In joint work with Greg Moore and Constantin Teleman, we propose a conceptual framework for symmetry in quantum field theory, built on the ongoing developments in topological field theory.  It incorporates these newer forms of symmetry, at least with sufficient finiteness conditions.

CMSA EVENT CMSA General Relativity Seminar: New Well-Posed Boundary Conditions for Semi-Classical Euclidean Gravity

Speaker: Xiaoyi Liu – University of California Santa Barbara

We consider four-dimensional Euclidean gravity in a finite cavity.  We point out that there exists a one-parameter family of boundary conditions, parameterized by a real constant, where a suitably Weyl-rescaled boundary metric is fixed, and all give a well-posed elliptic system, as opposed to the Dirichlet boundary condition. Focussing on static Euclidean solutions, we derive a thermodynamic first law. Restricting to a spherical spatial boundary, the infillings are flat space or the Schwarzschild solution and have similar thermodynamics to the Dirichlet case. We study the stability behavior of several geometries under these boundary conditions in both Euclidean and Lorentzian signatures and find two puzzles.

Zoom: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/7855806609

SEMINARS Probability Seminar: Super symmetry approach to the non hermitian random matrices

Speaker: Mariya Shcherbina – Institute for Low Temperature Physics of National Ukrainian Ac. Sci. (Kharkiv) and Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton)

We consider a complex Ginibre ensemble of random matrices with a deformation $H=H_0+A$, where $H_0$ is a Gaussian complex Ginibre matrix and $A$ is a rather general deformation matrix. The analysis of such ensemble is motivated by many problems of random matrix theory and its applications. We use the Grassmann integration methods to obtain integral representation of spectral correlation functions of the first and the second order and discuss the analysis of these representations with a saddle point method.

SEMINARS Probability Seminar: Mariya Shcherbina, IAS

Speaker: Mariya Shcherbina – IAS

NUMBER THEORY SEMINAR Number Theory Seminar: On the distribution of class groups — beyond Cohen-Lenstra and Gerth

Speaker: Yuan Liu – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Cohen-Lenstra heuristic studies the distribution of the p-part of the class group of quadratic number fields for odd prime $p$. Gerth’s conjecture regards the distribution of the $2$-part of the class group of quadratic fields. The main difference between these conjectures is that while the (odd) $p$-part of the class group behaves completely “randomly”, the $2$-part of the class group does not since the $2$-torsion of the class group is controlled by the genus field. In this talk, we will discuss a new conjecture generalizing Cohen-Lenstra and Gerth’s conjectures. The techniques involve Galois cohomology and the embedding problem of global fields.

HARVARD-MIT ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY SEMINAR Harvard-MIT Algebraic Geometry Seminar: Derived category of moduli space of vector bundles on a curve

Speaker: Han-Bom Moon – Fordham University

The derived category of moduli spaces of vector bundles on a curve is expected to be decomposed into the derived categories of symmetric products of the base curve. I will briefly explain the expectation and known results, and some consequences. This is joint work in progress with Kyoung-Seog Lee.

COLLOQUIUMS Special Colloquium: An introduction to representations of p-adic groups

Speaker: Jessica Fintzen – University of Bonn

An explicit understanding of the category of all (smooth, complex) representations of p-adic groups provides an important tool not just within representation theory. It also has applications to number theory and other areas, and in particular enables progress on various very different forms of the Langlands program.

In this talk, I will introduce p-adic groups and explain how the category of representations of p-adic groups decomposes into subcategories, called Bernstein blocks. I will then provide an overview of what we know about the structure of these Bernstein blocks. In particular, I will sketch how to use a joint project in progress with Adler, Mishra and Ohara to reduce a lot of problems about the (category of) representations of p-adic groups to problems about representations of finite groups of Lie type, where answers are often already known or are at least easier to achieve.

Talk at 3 pm in Science Center 507; Tea at 4 pm in the Math Common Room

SEMINARS Mathematical Picture Language Seminar: Logical Quantum Processor Based on Reconfigurable Atom Arrays

Speaker: Dolev Bluvstein – Harvard

Suppressing errors is one of the central challenges for useful quantum computing, requiring quantum error correction for large-scale processing. However, the overhead in the realization of error-corrected “logical” qubits, where information is encoded across many physical qubits for redundancy, poses significant challenges to large-scale logical quantum computing. In this talk we will discuss recent advances in quantum information processing using dynamically reconfigurable arrays of neutral atoms. With this platform we have realized programmable quantum processing with encoded logical qubits, combining the use of 280 physical qubits, high two-qubit gate fidelities, arbitrary connectivity, and mid-circuit readout. Using this logical processor with various types of error-correcting codes, we demonstrate that we can improve logical two-qubit gates by increasing code size, outperform physical qubit fidelities, create logical GHZ states, and perform computationally complex scrambling circuits using 48 logical qubits and hundreds of logical gates. We find that this logical encoding substantially improves algorithmic performance with error detection, outperforming physical qubits at both benchmarking and quantum simulations. These results herald the advent of early errorcorrected quantum computation, enabling new applications and inspiring a shift in both the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead.

*In-person and on Zoom*

QR Code & Link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/779283357?pwd=MitXVm1pYUlJVzZqT3lwV2pCT1ZUQT09 Passcode: 657361 https://mathpicture.fas.harvard.edu/seminar

SEMINARS Physics Quantum Colloquium: Quantum advantage in scientific computation?

Speaker: Prof. Lin Lin – Department of Mathematics, UC Berkeley

The advent of error-corrected quantum computers is anticipated to usher in a new era in computing, with Shor’s algorithm poised to demonstrate practical quantum advantages in prime number factorization. However, cryptography problems are typically not categorized as scientific computing problems. This raises the question: which scientific computing challenges are likely to benefit from quantum computers? I will first discuss some essential criteria and considerations towards realizing quantum advantages in these problems. I will then introduce some recent advancements in quantum algorithms, especially for simulating non-unitary quantum dynamics and open quantum system dynamics. The first half of the presentation is intended to be accessible to a broad audience, including both theoretical and experimental researchers.

SEMINARS Informal Seminar on Dynamics, Geometry and Moduli Spaces: Are fully intelligent robots coming soon?

Speaker: David Mumford – Harvard

Please see website for more details: www.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/sem.

HARVARD-MIT COMBINATORICS SEMINAR Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: New perspectives on tropical intersection theory

Speaker: Dustin Ross – SFSU

Tropical intersection theory aims to create analogues of intersection-theoretic tools from algebraic geometry in a piecewise-linear setting. In this talk, I’ll describe a few aspects of tropical intersection theory and discuss how these ideas can be used to build bridges between algebraic geometry, combinatorics, and convex geometry.

CMSA EVENT CMSA Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar: Geometric local systems on very general curves

Speaker: Aaron Landesman – MIT

Meeting ID: 863 5772 7377 Passcode: 843174

HARVARD-MIT COMBINATORICS SEMINAR Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Ramsey and Turán numbers of sparse hypergraphs

Speaker: Jonathan Tidor – Stanford

**Special Time and Location**

The degeneracy of a graph is a central measure of sparseness in extremal graph theory. In 1966, Erdős conjectured that $d$-degenerate bipartite graphs have Turán number $O(n^{2-1/d})$. Though this is still far from solved, the bound $O(n^{2-1/4d})$ was proved by Alon, Krivelevich, and Sudakov in 2003. In a similar vein, the Burr–Erdős conjecture states that graphs of bounded degeneracy have Ramsey number linear in their number of vertices. (This is in contrast to general graphs whose Ramsey number can be as large as exponential in the number of vertices.) This conjecture was proved in a breakthrough work of Lee in 2017.In this talk, we investigate the hypergraph analogues of these two questions. Though the typical notion of hypergraph degeneracy does not give any information about either the Ramsey or Turán numbers of hypergraphs, we instead define a notion that we call skeletal degeneracy. We prove the hypergraph analogue of the Burr–Erdős conjecture: hypergraphs of bounded skeletal degeneracy have Ramsey number linear in their number of vertices. Furthermore, we give good bounds on the Turán number of partite hypergraphs in terms of their skeletal degeneracy. Both of these results use the technique of dependent random choice.

CMSA EVENT CMSA Quantum Matter in Math and Physics Seminar: Single-shot Readout of Topological Qubits

Speaker: Chetan Nayak – Microsoft & UCSB

Time:  Friday April 19 10:00 am – 11:30 am ET  

Location: Harvard CMSA G10

Zoom:  https://harvard.zoom.us/j/977347126

Password: cmsa

HARVARD-MIT COMBINATORICS SEMINAR Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Optimal mixing of the down-up walk on fixed-size independent sets

Speaker: Vishesh Jain – UIC

Markov chains provide a natural approach to sample from various distributions on the independent sets of a graph. For the uniform distribution on independent sets of a given size $k$ in a graph, perhaps the most natural Markov chain is the so-called “down-up walk”. The down-up walk, which essentially goes back to the foundational work of Metropolis, Rosenbluth, Rosenbluth, Teller and Teller on the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method, starts at an arbitrary independent set of size $k$, and in every step, removes an element uniformly at random and adds a uniformly random legal choice.

Davies and Perkins showed that there is a critical $k = \alpha(\Delta)n$ such that it is hard to (approximately) sample from the uniform distribution on independent sets for the class of graphs $G$ with $n$ vertices and maximum degree at most $\Delta$. They conjectured that for $k$ below this critical value, the down-up walk mixes in polynomial time. I will discuss a resolution of this conjecture, which additionally shows that the down-up walk mixes in (optimal) time $O_{\Delta}(n\log{n})$.

Based on joint work with Marcus Michelen, Huy Tuan Pham, and Thuy-Duong Vuong.

SEMINARS Gauge Theory and Topology Seminar: Morse theory on moduli spaces of pairs and the Bogomolov-Miyaoka-Yau inequality

Speaker: Paul Feehan – Rutgers University

We describe an approach to Bialynicki-Birula theory for holomorphic C^∗ actions on complex analytic spaces and Morse-Bott theory for Hamiltonian functions for the induced circle actions. A key principle is that positivity of a suitably defined “virtual Morse-Bott index” at a critical point of the Hamiltonian function implies that the critical point cannot be a local minimum even when it is a singular point in the moduli space. Inspired by Hitchin’s 1987 study of the moduli space of Higgs monopoles over Riemann surfaces, we apply our method in the context of the moduli space of non-Abelian monopoles or, equivalently, stable holomorphic pairs over a closed, complex, Kaehler surface. We use the Hirzebruch-Riemann-Roch Theorem to compute virtual Morse-Bott indices of all critical strata (Seiberg-Witten moduli subspaces) and show that these indices are positive in a setting motivated by a conjecture that all closed, smooth four-manifolds of Seiberg-Witten simple type (including symplectic four-manifolds) obey the Bogomolov-Miyaoka-Yau inequality.

HARVARD-MIT ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY SEMINAR Harvard-MIT Algebraic Geometry Seminar: The Chow ring of the universal Picard stack over the hyperelliptic locus

Speaker: Hannah Larson – UC Berkeley

Understanding the line bundles on curves are essential to understanding the curves themselves. As such, the universal Picard stack J^d_g –> M_g parametrizing degree d line bundles on genus g curves is an important object of study. Recently, progress has been made on the intersection theory of M_g in low genus by stratifying the moduli space by gonality. The smallest piece in this stratification is the hyperelliptic locus. Motivated by this, I’ll present several results about the restriction of J^d_g to the hyperelliptic locus, denoted J^d_{2,g}. These include a presentation of the rational Chow ring of J^d_{2,g}. I also determine the integral Picard group of J^d_{2,g}, completing (and extending to the PGL_2-equivariant case) prior work of Erman and Wood.

NUMBER THEORY SEMINAR Number Theory Seminar: Shadow line distributions

Speaker: Jennifer Balakrishnan – Boston University

Let $E/\mathbb{Q}$ be an elliptic curve of analytic rank $2$, and let $p$ be an odd prime of good, ordinary reduction such that the $p$-torsion of $E(\mathbb{Q})$ is trivial. Let $K$ be an imaginary quadratic field satisfying the Heegner hypothesis for $E$ and such that the analytic rank of the twisted curve $E^K/\mathbb{Q}$ is $1$. Further suppose that $p$ splits in $\mathcal{O}_K$. Under these assumptions, there is a $1$-dimensional $\mathbb{Q}_p$-vector space attached to the triple $(E, p, K)$, known as the shadow line, and it can be computed using anticyclotomic $p$-adic heights. We describe the computation of these heights and shadow lines. Furthermore, fixing pairs $(E, p)$ and varying $K$, we present some data on the distribution of these shadow lines. This is joint work with Mirela Çiperiani, Barry Mazur, and Karl Rubin.

HARVARD-MIT COMBINATORICS SEMINAR Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Bender–Knuth Billiards in Coxeter Groups When

Speaker: Colin Defant – Harvard

Let (W,S) be a Coxeter system, and write S={s_i : i is in I}, where I is a finite index set. Consider a nonempty finite convex subset L of W. If W is a symmetric group, then L is the set of linear extensions of a poset, and there are important Bender–Knuth involutions BK_i (indexed by I) defined on L. For arbitrary W and for each i in I, we introduce an operator \tau_i on W that we call a noninvertible Bender–Knuth toggle; this operator restricts to an involution on L that coincides with BK_i when W is a symmetric group. Given an ordering i_1,…,i_n of I and a starting element u_0 of W, we can repeatedly apply the toggles in the order \tau_{i_1},…,\tau_{i_n},\tau_{i_1},…,\tau_{i_n},…. This produces a sequence of elements of W that can be viewed in terms of a beam of light that bounces around in an arrangement of transparent windows and one-way mirrors. Our central questions concern whether or not the beam of light eventually ends up in the convex set L. We will discuss several situations where this occurs and several situations where it does not. This is based on joint work with Grant Barkley, Eliot Hodges, Noah Kravitz, and Mitchell Lee.

CMSA EVENT CMSA Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar: The logarithmic double ramification locus [REMOTE]

Speaker: Alessandro Chiodo – Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu-Paris Rive Gauche

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86442722062?pwd=V21aa2JlQnpsUHpvQ3BLVzA3MnNuQT09

Meeting ID: 864 4272 2062 Passcode: 941307

CMSA EVENT CMSA Quantum Matter in Math and Physics Seminar: Love and Naturalness

Speaker: Mikhail Ivanov – MIT

Recent progress in gravitational wave astronomy has spurred the development of efficient tools to describe gravitational binary dynamics. One such tool is classical worldline effective field theory (EFT). In the first part of my talk, I will show how to use this EFT for systematic studies of tidal heating and deformations (Love numbers) of compact objects. I will present a gauge-invariant definition of Love numbers and show how to extract them in a coordinate-independent way from scattering amplitudes of the gravitational Raman process. I will show that the worldline EFT exhibits strong fine-tuning when applied to black holes. This gives rise to a naturalness paradox associated with the vanishing of black hole static Love numbers. In the second part of my talk, I will present a new symmetry of black holes (Love symmetry) that elegantly resolves this paradox. The Love symmetry is tightly connected to isometries of extremal black holes that appear in many holographic constructions. It also provides a curious example of IR/UV mixing, which may give insights for other hierarchy problems.

CMSA EVENT CMSA Quantum Matter in Math and Physics Seminar: What Observables are Safe to Calculate?

Speaker: Jesse Thaler – MIT

In collider physics, perturbative quantum field theory is the workhorse framework for computing theoretical predictions to compare to experimental measurements. An observable is called “safe” if its cross section can be predicted order-by-order in perturbation theory with controlled non-perturbative corrections. In this talk, I show that naive definitions of “safety” are inadequate to determine which observable are perturbatively calculable. I then argue for a more refined definition of safety based on principles from optimal transport theory.

HARVARD-MIT COMBINATORICS SEMINAR Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Colored Interacting Particle Systems on the Ring: Stationary Measures from Yang–Baxter Equation

Speaker: Matthew Nicoletti – MIT

Recently, there has been much progress in understanding stationary measures for colored (also called multi-species or multi-type) interacting particle systems, motivated by asymptotic phenomena and rich underlying algebraic and combinatorial structures (such as nonsymmetric Macdonald polynomials).

In this work, we present a unified approach to constructing stationary measures for several colored particle systems on the ring and the line, including (1) the Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process (mASEP); (2) the q-deformed Totally Asymmetric Zero Range Process (TAZRP) also known as the q-Boson particle system; (3) the q-deformed Pushing Totally Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process (q-PushTASEP). Our method is based on integrable stochastic vertex models and the Yang–Baxter equation. We express the stationary measures as partition functions of new “queue vertex models” on the cylinder. The stationarity property is a direct consequence of the Yang–Baxter equation. This is joint work with A. Aggarwal and L. Petrov.

CMSA EVENT Workshop on Global Categorical Symmetries

The CMSA will be hosting a  Workshop on Global Categorical Symmetries  from April 29–May 3, 2024.

Organizers:

Dan Freed (Harvard CMSA & Math) Constantin Teleman  (UC Berkeley)

Participation in the workshop is by invitation.

HARVARD-MIT ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY SEMINAR Harvard-MIT Algebraic Geometry Seminar: Qile Chen (Boston College)

Speaker: Qile Chen – Boston College

SEMINARS Introductory Math Seminar: Choosing Your First Math Class

Speaker: Monique Harrison – University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Monique Harrison will be sharing her work with the Harvard Math Department, the conclusion of a survey and interview study in the Fall 2023 semester. Math courses at Harvard serve the majority of undergraduates who matriculate and often can have large impacts on subsequent student decision-making. She will discuss the findings of this study, which targeted first-year course selection and course experiences. Implications for department and university policies will be discussed.

Applied Mathematics

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Applied Mathematics is an area of study within the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Prospective students apply through Harvard Griffin GSAS; in the online application, select  “Engineering and Applied Sciences” as your program choice and select “PhD Applied Math” in the Area of Study menu.

Applied Mathematics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the creation and imaginative use of mathematical concepts to pose and solve problems over the entire gamut of the physical and biomedical sciences and engineering, and increasingly, the social sciences and humanities

Working individually and as part of teams collaborating across the University and beyond, you will partner with faculty to quantitatively describe, predict, design and control phenomena in a range of fields. Projects current and past students have worked on include collaborations with mechanical engineers to uncover some of the fundamental properties of artificial muscle fibers for soft robotics and developing new ways to simulate tens of thousands of bubbles in foamy flows for industrial applications such as food and drug production.

Graduates of the program have gone on to a range of careers in industry in organizations like the Kingdom of Morocco, Meta, and Bloomberg. Others have secured faculty positions at Dartmouth, Imperial College in London, and UCLA.

Standardized Tests

GRE General:  Not accepted

APPLICATION DEADLINE

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Daniel Volmar The Computer in the Garbage Can: Air-Defense Systems in the Organization of US Nuclear Command and Control, 1940-1960  (2019)

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For a complete list of PhDs awarded in History of Science up to 2023, download this PDF .

To update your entry, please email Linda Schneider:  [email protected] .

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2024 Harvard Board Elections Now Open

Elections for Harvard's Board of Overseers and elected directors of the Harvard Alumni Association have opened. Harvard degree holders are invited to vote online or by paper ballot by May 14.

Three to Receive Harvard Medal

In recognition of extraordinary service to the University, Scott Abell AB ’72, Katherine Lapp, and Lee Pelton PhD ’84 will receive the 2024 Harvard Medal at Harvard Alumni Day on May 31.

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100 Notable alumni of Harvard University

Updated: February 29, 2024

Harvard University is 1st in the world, 1st in North America, and 1st in the United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 100 notable alumni from Harvard University sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. 38 individuals affiliated with Harvard University won Nobel Prizes for Peace, in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Economics.

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African-American president in U.S. history. Obama previously served as a U.S. senator representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and as a civil rights lawyer and university lecturer.

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, often referred to as JFK or Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress prior to his presidency.

William Henry Gates III is an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and writer best known for co-founding the software giant Microsoft, along with his childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president, and chief software architect, while also being its largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a prominent pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American businessman and philanthropist. He co-founded the social media service Facebook, along with his Harvard roommates in 2004, and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of which he is executive chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder.

Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman is an Israeli-born American actress. She has had a prolific film career since her teenage years and has starred in various blockbusters and independent films, receiving multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. He was a member of the Democratic Party and is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms. His initial two terms were centered on combating the Great Depression, while his third and fourth saw him shift his focus to America's involvement in World War II.

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.

Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist. He was director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II and is often called the "father of the atomic bomb".

Matthew Paige Damon is an American actor, film producer, and screenwriter. Ranked among Forbes' most bankable stars in 2007, the films in which he has appeared have collectively earned over $3.88 billion at the North American box office, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. He has received various awards and nominations, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for three British Academy Film Awards and seven Primetime Emmy Awards.

Judy Garland

Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. She attained international stardom and critical acclaim: as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles; as a recording artist; and on the concert stage. Renowned for her versatility, she received an Academy Juvenile Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Special Tony Award. Garland won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her 1961 live recording, Judy at Carnegie Hall; she was the first woman to win that award.

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt Jr., often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, conservationist, naturalist, and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He previously held various positions in New York politics, rising up the ranks to serve as the state's 33rd governor for two years. He later served as the 25th vice president under president William McKinley for six months in 1901, assuming the presidency after McKinley's assassination. As president, Roosevelt emerged as a leader of the Republican Party and became a driving force for anti-trust and Progressive policies.

Helen Keller

Helen Adams Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton to replace retiring justice Byron White, and at the time was viewed as a moderate consensus-builder. Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O'Connor. During her tenure, Ginsburg authored the majority opinions in cases such as United States v. Virginia (1996), Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc. (2000), and City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York (2005). Later in her tenure, Ginsburg received attention for passionate dissents that reflected liberal views of the law. She was popularly dubbed "the Notorious R.B.G.", a moniker she later embraced.

Robert F. Kennedy

Robert Francis Kennedy, also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American politician and lawyer. He served as the 64th United States attorney general from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a U.S. senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968, when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Like his brothers John F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, he was a prominent member of the Democratic Party and is an icon of modern American liberalism.

Michelle Obama

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to former president Barack Obama.

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

Henry Kissinger

Henry Alfred Kissinger was an American diplomat, political scientist, geopolitical consultant, and politician who served as the United States secretary of state and national security advisor in the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1977.

Rashida Jones

Rashida Leah Jones is an American actress, writer, producer, and director. She is best known for her roles as Louisa Fenn on the Fox drama series Boston Public (2000–2002), as Karen Filippelli on the NBC comedy series The Office (2006–2009; 2011), as Ann Perkins on the NBC comedy series Parks and Recreation (2009–2015), and as the eponymous lead role in the TBS comedy series Angie Tribeca (2016–2019).

Susan Wojcicki

Susan Diane Wojcicki is an American business executive who was the chief executive officer (CEO) of YouTube from 2014 to 2023. Her net worth was estimated at $765 million in 2022.

Jon Bernthal

Jonathan Edward Bernthal is an American actor. Beginning his career in the early 2000s, he came to prominence for portraying Shane Walsh on the AMC horror series The Walking Dead (2010–2012; 2018), where he was a starring cast member in the first two seasons. Bernthal achieved further recognition as Frank Castle / Punisher in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) television series Daredevil (2016) and The Punisher (2017–2019). For his recurring role as Michael Berzatto in the series The Bear (2022–present), Bernthal received a Primetime Emmy nomination.

Elisabeth Shue

Elisabeth Judson Shue is an American actress. She is best known for her roles in the films The Karate Kid (1984), Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Cocktail (1988), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Soapdish (1991), The Saint (1997), Hollow Man (2000), Piranha 3D (2010), Battle of the Sexes (2017), Death Wish (2018) and Greyhound (2020). For her performance in Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Shue was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress as well as a BAFTA, Golden Globe and SAG Award.

Jared Kushner

Jared Corey Kushner is an American businessman, investor, and former government official. He is the son-in-law of former president Donald Trump through his marriage to Ivanka Trump, and served as a senior advisor to Trump from 2017 to 2021. He was also Director of the Office of American Innovation.

Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones is an American actor. He has received various accolades including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Ben Shapiro

Benjamin Aaron Shapiro is an American lawyer, columnist, author, and conservative political commentator. He writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, and serves as editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he co-founded in 2015. Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show, a daily political podcast and live radio show. He was editor-at-large of Breitbart News from 2012 until his resignation in 2016. Shapiro has authored sixteen books.

John Adams was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain. During the latter part of the Revolutionary War and in the early years of the new nation, he served the U.S. government as a senior diplomat in Europe. Adams was the first person to hold the office of vice president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. He was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with important contemporaries, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams and his friend and political rival Thomas Jefferson.

Rafael Edward Cruz is an American politician, attorney, and political commentator serving as the junior United States senator from Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz was the solicitor general of Texas from 2003 to 2008.

Eduardo Saverin

Eduardo Luiz Saverin is a Brazilian billionaire entrepreneur and angel investor based in Singapore. Saverin is one of the co-founders of Facebook. In 2012, he owned 53 million Facebook shares (approximately 2% of all outstanding shares), valued at approximately $2 billion at the time. He also invested in early-stage startups such as Qwiki and Jumio. As of February 17, 2024, his net worth was $26.2 billion, making him the 65th richest person in the world.

Michael Bloomberg

Michael Rubens Bloomberg is an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author. He is the majority owner and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P., and was its CEO from 2014 until 2023. He served as the mayor of New York City for three terms from 2002 to 2013 and was a candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president of the United States. He has served as chair of the Defense Innovation Board, an independent advisory board that provides recommendations on artificial intelligence, software, data and digital modernization to the United States Department of Defense, since June 2022.

Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd is an American actress. She grew up in a family of performing artists, the daughter of country music singer Naomi Judd and the half-sister of country music singer Wynonna Judd. Her acting career has spanned more than three decades, and she has become heavily involved in global humanitarian efforts and political activism.

Ron DeSantis

Ronald Dion DeSantis is an American politician serving since 2019 as the 46th governor of Florida. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Florida's 6th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013 to 2018. DeSantis was a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He withdrew his candidacy in January 2024.

Darren Aronofsky

Darren Aronofsky is an American filmmaker. His films are noted for their surreal, melodramatic, and often disturbing elements, frequently in the form of psychological fiction.

Albert Arnold Gore Jr. is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He previously served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1985 to 1993 and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1985. Gore was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2000 presidential election, which he lost to George W. Bush.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr

Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., also known by his initials as RFK Jr. and the nickname Bobby, is an American politician, environmental lawyer and activist who promotes anti-vaccine misinformation and public health conspiracy theories. He is the chairman and founder of Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group, and an independent candidate in the 2024 presidential election. A member of the Kennedy family, Kennedy is a son of U.S. attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and senator Ted Kennedy.

Pete Buttigieg

Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg is an American politician and former naval officer who is currently serving as the 19th United States Secretary of Transportation. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020, which earned him the nickname "Mayor Pete".

Caroline Kennedy

Caroline Bouvier Kennedy is an American author, attorney, and diplomat serving as the United States ambassador to Australia since 2022. Kennedy previously served in the Obama administration as the United States ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017. She is a member of the Kennedy family as well as the only surviving child of US president John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

David Rockefeller

David Rockefeller was an American investment banker who served as chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan Corporation. He was the oldest living member of the third generation of the Rockefeller family, and family patriarch from 2004 until his death in 2017. Rockefeller was the fifth son and youngest child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and a grandson of John D. Rockefeller and Laura Spelman Rockefeller.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. In 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210 million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000. Since 1996, he has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.

Ted Kennedy

Edward Moore Kennedy was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts. A member of the Democratic Party and the prominent Kennedy family, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died. He is ranked fifth in U.S. history for length of continuous service as a senator. Kennedy was the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and U.S. attorney general and U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the father of U.S. representative Patrick J. Kennedy.

Mitt Romney

Willard Mitt Romney is an American politician, businessman, and lawyer who has served as the junior United States senator from Utah since 2019. He served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2012 election, losing to Barack Obama.

Conan O'Brien

Conan Christopher O'Brien is an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. He is best known for having hosted late-night talk shows for almost 28 years, beginning with Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993–2009) and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (2009–2010) on the NBC television network, and Conan (2010–2021) on the cable channel TBS. Before his hosting career, O'Brien was a writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1988 to 1991, and the Fox animated sitcom The Simpsons from 1991 to 1993. He has also been host of the podcast series Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend since 2018 and is set to launch a travel show, Conan O'Brien Must Go, on Max.

Colin Kelly Jost is an American comedian, writer, and actor. Jost has been a staff writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live since 2005, and co-anchor of Weekend Update since 2014. He also served as one of the show's co-head writers from 2012 to 2015 and later came back as one of the show's head writers in 2017 until 2022 alongside Michael Che.

John Lithgow

John Arthur Lithgow is an American actor. He studied at Harvard University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art before becoming known for his diverse work on stage and screen. He has received numerous accolades including six Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Tony Awards as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and four Grammy Awards. Lithgow has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2001 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2005.

Ratan Naval Tata is an Indian industrialist, philanthropist and former chairman of Tata Sons. He was a chairman of the Tata Group from 1990 to 2012, and interim chairman from October 2016 through February 2017. He continues to head its charitable trusts. In 2008, he received the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian honour in India, after receiving the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour in 2000.

Tyra Lynne Banks, also known as BanX, is an American model, television personality, producer, writer, and actress. Born in Inglewood, California, she began her career as a model at the age of 15 and was the first Black American woman to be featured on the covers of GQ and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, on which she appeared three times. Banks was one of only a few Black models to achieve Supermodel status. She was a Victoria's Secret Angel from 1997 to 2005. By the early 2000s, Banks was one of the world's top-earning models.

Jeremy Shu-How Lin is a Taiwanese-American professional basketball player for the New Taipei Kings of the P. League+ (PLG). He unexpectedly led a winning turnaround with the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) during the 2011–12 season, sparking a cultural phenomenon known as "Linsanity". Lin was the first American of Chinese or Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA, and is one of the few Asian Americans to have played in the league. He is the first Asian American player to win an NBA championship, having done so with the Toronto Raptors in 2019.

Paul Gardner Allen was an American business magnate, computer programmer, researcher, investor, film producer, and philanthropist. He is best known for co-founding Microsoft Corporation with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which helped spark the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Allen was ranked as the 44th-wealthiest person in the world by Forbes in 2018, with an estimated net worth of $20.3 billion at the time of his death.

Isoroku Yamamoto

Isoroku Yamamoto was a Marshal Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II.

Steve Bannon

Stephen Kevin Bannon is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker. He served as the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump during the first seven months of Trump's term. He is a former executive chairman of Breitbart News and previously served on the board of the now-defunct data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument in favor of citizen disobedience against an unjust state.

Mike Pompeo

Michael Richard Pompeo is an American politician who served in the administration of Donald Trump as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2017 to 2018 and as the 70th United States secretary of state from 2018 to 2021. He also served in the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017.

Mira Sorvino

Mira Katherine Sorvino is an American actress. She won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite (1995).

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams was an American statesman, politician, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States secretary of state from 1817 to 1825. During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams served as an ambassador and also as a member of the United States Congress representing Massachusetts in both chambers. He was the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801, and First Lady Abigail Adams. Initially a Federalist like his father, he won election to the presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and later, in the mid-1830s, became affiliated with the Whig Party.

Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Rajiv Gandhi is an Indian politician and a member of the Indian Parliament, who represents the constituency of Wayanad, Kerala in the Lok Sabha. He previously represented the constituency of Amethi, Uttar Pradesh. He is a member of the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress and was the party president from December 2017 to July 2019. He is the chairperson of the Indian Youth Congress, the National Students Union of India and a trustee of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust. He is the son of the former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi.

Pierre Trudeau

Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 15th prime minister of Canada from 1968 to 1979 and from 1980 to 1984. Between his non-consecutive terms as prime minister, he served as the leader of the Opposition from 1979 to 1980.

B. J. Novak

Benjamin Joseph Manaly Novak is an American actor, comedian, and writer. He has received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Lisa Brennan-Jobs

Lisa Nicole Brennan-Jobs is an American writer. She is the daughter of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Chrisann Brennan.

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace's 1996 novel Infinite Jest was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. His posthumous novel, The Pale King (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012. The Los Angeles Times's David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last twenty years".

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published eighteen books of poetry, eighteen novels, eleven books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.

Kayleigh McEnany

Kayleigh McEnany is an American conservative political commentator, television personality, and writer who served the administration of Donald Trump as the 33rd White House press secretary from April 2020 to January 2021.

Jack Lemmon

John Uhler Lemmon III was an American actor. Considered equally proficient in both dramatic and comic roles, Lemmon was known for his anxious, middle-class everyman screen persona in dramedy pictures, leading The Guardian to label him as "the most successful tragi-comedian of his age."

Jonathan Taylor Thomas

Jonathan Taylor Thomas is an American actor and director. He is known for portraying Randy Taylor on Home Improvement and voicing young Simba in Disney's 1994 animated feature film The Lion King and Pinocchio in New Line Cinema's 1996 film The Adventures of Pinocchio.

Joseph P. Kennedy Sr

Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr. was an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and politician. He is known for his own political prominence as well as that of his children and was a patriarch of the Kennedy family, which included President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and longtime Senator Ted Kennedy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Friedrich Nietzsche considered him "the most gifted of the Americans", and Walt Whitman referred to him as his "master".

Tom Morello

Thomas Baptist Morello is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, and political activist. He is best known for his tenure with the rock bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. Between 2016 and 2019, Morello was a member of the supergroup Prophets of Rage. Morello was a touring musician with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Under the moniker the Nightwatchman Morello released his solo work. Together with Boots Riley, he formed Street Sweeper Social Club. Morello co-founded Axis of Justice, which airs a monthly program on Pacifica Radio station KPFK (90.7 FM) in Los Angeles.

Michael Crichton

John Michael Crichton was an American author, screenwriter and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works heavily feature technology and are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres. Crichton’s novels often explore human technological advancement and attempted dominance over nature, both with frequently catastrophic results; many of his works are cautionary tales, especially regarding themes of biotechnology. Several of his stories center specifically around themes of genetic modification, hybridization, paleontology and/or zoology. Many feature medical or scientific underpinnings, reflective of his own medical training and scientific background.

Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto was a Pakistani politician and stateswoman who served as the 11th and 13th prime minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996. She was the first woman elected to head a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country. Ideologically a liberal and a secularist, she chaired or co-chaired the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) from the early 1980s until her assassination in 2007.

Caroline Wozniacki

Caroline Wozniacki is a Danish professional tennis player. She was ranked world No. 1 in singles for a total of 71 weeks, including at the end of 2010 and 2011. She achieved the top ranking for the first time on 11 October 2010, becoming the 20th player in the Open Era and the first from a Scandinavian country to hold the top position. In 2018, she became the first Dane to win a major singles title, at the Australian Open.

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American-born conductor to receive international acclaim. Bernstein was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history" according to music critic Donal Henahan. Bernstein's honors and accolades include seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and 16 Grammy Awards (including the Lifetime Achievement Award) as well as an Academy Award nomination. He received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1981.

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot OM was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. He is considered to be one of the 20th century's greatest poets, as well as a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry. His use of language, writing style, and verse structure reinvigorated English poetry. He is also noted for his critical essays, which often reevaluated long-held cultural beliefs.

Antonin Scalia

Antonin Gregory Scalia was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University was named in his honor.

John Roberts

John Glover Roberts Jr. is an American lawyer and jurist serving since 2005 as the 17th chief justice of the United States. He has been described as having a moderate conservative judicial philosophy, though he is primarily an institutionalist. He has shown a willingness to work with the Supreme Court's liberal bloc, and has been regarded as a swing vote on the Court.

Damien Chazelle

Damien Sayre Chazelle is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for directing the films Whiplash (2014), La La Land (2016), First Man (2018), and Babylon (2022), for which he has won various awards, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and a BAFTA Award.

Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres was an Israeli politician who served as the eighth prime minister of Israel from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996 and as the ninth president of Israel from 2007 to 2014. He was a member of twelve cabinets and represented five political parties in a political career spanning 70 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and except for a three-month-long interregnum in early 2006, served as a member of the Knesset continuously until he was elected president in 2007. Serving in the Knesset for 48 years (with the first uninterrupted stretch lasting more than 46 years), Peres is the longest serving member in the Knesset's history. At the time of his retirement from politics in 2014, he was the world's oldest head of state and was considered the last link to Israel's founding generation.

Chuck Schumer

Charles Ellis Schumer is an American politician serving as Senate Majority Leader since 2021 and the senior United States senator from New York since 1999. A member of the Democratic Party, he has led the Senate Democratic Caucus since 2017 and was Senate Minority Leader from 2017 to 2021. Schumer is in his fifth Senate term, making him the longest-serving US senator from New York, having surpassed Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jacob K. Javits in 2023. He is the dean of New York's congressional delegation.

Mehmet Cengiz Öz, also known as Dr. Oz, is an American television personality, physician, author, professor emeritus of cardiothoracic surgery at Columbia University, and former political candidate.

Ban Ki-moon

Ban Ki-moon is a South Korean politician and diplomat who served as the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations between 2007 and 2016. Prior to his appointment as secretary-general, Ban was the South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade between 2004 and 2006. Ban was initially considered to be a long shot for the office of Secretary-General of the United Nations; he began to campaign for the office in February 2006. As the foreign minister of South Korea, he was able to travel to all the countries on the United Nations Security Council, a maneuver that subsequently turned him into the campaign's front runner.

Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy is an American entrepreneur and politician. He founded Roivant Sciences, a pharmaceutical company, in 2014. In February 2023, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 United States presidential election. He suspended his campaign in January 2024, after finishing fourth in Iowa's caucuses.

Neil Gorsuch

Neil McGill Gorsuch is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31, 2017, and has served since April 10, 2017.

Tatyana Ali

Tatyana Marisol Ali is an American actress and singer best known for her role as Ashley Banks on the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 1990 to 1996. She starred as Tyana Jones on the TV One original series Love That Girl!, and played a recurring role as Roxanne on the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless from 2007 to 2013.

William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst Sr. was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboyant methods of yellow journalism influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing sensationalism and human interest stories. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 with Mitchell Trubitt after being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father, Senator George Hearst.

Robert Kraft

Robert Kenneth Kraft is an American sports executive and businessman. He is the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Kraft Group, a diversified holding company with assets in paper and packaging, sports and entertainment, real estate development, and a private equity portfolio. Since 1994, he has owned the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). Kraft also owns the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer (MLS), which he founded in 1996, and the esport-based Boston Uprising, which he founded in 2017. He has an estimated net worth of $11.1 billion dollars according to Forbes.

Steven James Zahn is an American actor. His film roles include Reality Bites (1994), Stuart Little (1999), Daddy Day Care (2003), Shattered Glass (2003), Sahara (2005), Chicken Little (2005), the Diary of a Wimpy Kid trilogy (2010–2012), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), The Good Dinosaur (2015), and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). On television, Zahn appeared as Davis McAlary on HBO's Treme (2010–2013), and as Mark Mossbacher in the first season of the HBO satire comedy miniseries The White Lotus (2021), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Zahn won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his performance in the film Happy, Texas (1999).

Michael Collins

Michael Collins was an American astronaut who flew the Apollo 11 command module Columbia around the Moon in 1969 while his crewmates, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, made the first crewed landing on the surface. He was also a test pilot and major general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences; he was initially briefly known by the pen name William Lee. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "Shotgun Art".

Aga Khan IV

Shah Karim al-Husayni, known by the religious title Mawlānā Hazar Imam by his Ismaili followers and elsewhere as Aga Khan IV, is the 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailis. He has held the position of Imam and the title of Aga Khan since 11 July, 1957, when, at the age of 20, he succeeded his grandfather, Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III. The Aga Khan claims direct lineal descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Ali, who is considered an Imam by Nizari Ismailis, and Ali's wife Fatima, Muhammad's daughter from his first marriage.

W. E. B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.

Dustin Moskovitz

Dustin Aaron Moskovitz is an American billionaire internet entrepreneur who co-founded Facebook, Inc. (now known as Meta Platforms) with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. In 2008, he left Facebook to co-found Asana with Justin Rosenstein. In March 2011, Forbes reported Moskovitz to be the youngest self-made billionaire in the world, on the basis of his then 2.34% share in Facebook. As of October 2023, his net worth is estimated at US$18.0 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Antony Blinken

Antony John Blinken is an American lawyer and diplomat currently serving as the 71st United States secretary of state. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under President Barack Obama. Blinken was previously national security advisor to then-Vice President Joe Biden from 2009 to 2013.

William James Sidis

William James Sidis was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic skills who was active as a mathematician, linguist, historian, and author (whose works were published covertly due to never using his real name). He wrote the book The Animate and the Inanimate, published in 1925 (written around 1920), in which he speculated about the origin of life in the context of thermodynamics.

Steve Ballmer

Steven Anthony Ballmer is an American business executive and investor who was the chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is a co-founder of Ballmer Group, a philanthropic investment company. As of January 2024, Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his personal wealth at around $135 billion, making him the sixth-richest person in the world.

Stockard Channing

Stockard Channing is an American actress. She played Betty Rizzo in the film Grease (1978) and First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the NBC television series The West Wing (1999–2006). She also originated the role of Ouisa Kittredge in the stage and film versions of Six Degrees of Separation; the 1993 film version earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She was also one of two comic foils of The Number Painter on Sesame Street.

Dean Norris

Dean Joseph Norris is an American actor. He is best known for playing DEA agent Hank Schrader on the AMC series Breaking Bad (2008–2013) and its spin-off Better Call Saul (2020). He also portrayed town councilman James "Big Jim" Rennie on the CBS series Under the Dome (2013–2015) and played mob boss Clay "Uncle Daddy" Husser on the TNT series Claws (2017–2022). Throughout his career, Norris has acted in nearly 50 movies and more than 100 different TV shows.

Christian Horner

Christian Edward Johnston Horner,, is a British former racing driver and team principal of the Red Bull Formula One team, a position he has held since 2005, winning thirteen world titles (six World Constructors' Championships and seven World Drivers' Championships). His motorsport career started as a racing car driver, before he switched roles to become head of International Formula 3000 team Arden International Motorsport in 1999.

Elaine Chao

Elaine Lan Chao is an American businesswoman and former government official who served as United States secretary of labor in the administration of George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009 and as United States secretary of transportation in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, Chao was the first Asian American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet or as secretary of transportation.

Bridgit Mendler

Bridgit Claire Mendler is an American actress, singer, and songwriter. She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Radio Disney Music Award, and nominations for three Shorty Awards, eight World Music Awards, and a Young Artist Award.

B. F. Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor, and social philosopher. Considered the father of Behaviorism, he was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.

Gabe Newell

Gabe Logan Newell, also known by his nickname Gaben, is an American businessman who is the president of the video game company Valve Corporation.

Timothy Michael Kaine is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Virginia since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 70th governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010, and as the 38th lieutenant governor of Virginia from 2002 to 2006. Kaine was the Democratic nominee for vice president of the United States in the 2016 election as Hillary Clinton's running mate.

Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Kara Sandberg is an American technology executive, philanthropist, and writer. Sandberg served as chief operating officer (COO) of Meta Platforms, a position from which she stepped down in August 2022. She is also the founder of LeanIn.Org. In 2008, she was made COO at Facebook, becoming the company's second-highest-ranking official. In June 2012, she was elected to Facebook's board of directors, becoming the first woman to serve on its board. As head of the company's advertising business, Sandberg was credited for making the company profitable. Prior to joining Facebook as its COO, Sandberg was vice president of global online sales and operations at Google and was involved in its philanthropic arm Google.org. Before that, Sandberg served as research assistant to Lawrence Summers at the World Bank, and subsequently as his chief of staff when he was Bill Clinton's United States Secretary of the Treasury.

Careers of alumni

What can you do with a degree in Computer Science? Some computer science graduates have moved into industry (as programmers) or entered graduate programs (from applied sciences to medicine to law).

Still others have pursued entrepreneurial/business routes, found a home in the evolving world of digital media, or used their computational skills to move into finance, banking, or health care.

Put simply, computer science serves as an entryway into just about every scientific and business-related field, and increasingly acts as an accelerator for success in academia and industry.

In fact, our alumni have been going into so many different fields and areas, that we find it difficult to keep up with them and maintain this page…

Careers By Area

“I found that being around so many intelligent and motivated people inspired me to think very big about what I wanted to do in my own life." Danielle Feinberg ‘96, Pixar

Some examples of areas you can explore are

Artificial Intelligence: Develop computers that simulate human learning and reasoning ability.

Computer Architecture: Design new components and systems for everything from high-performance, networked parallel machines to low-cost and lowpower iPods.

Computer Design and Engineering: Design new computer circuits, microchips, and other electronic components.

Theoretical Computer Science: Investigate the fundamental theories of how computers solve problems, and apply the results to other areas of computer science.

Information Technology: Develop and manage information systems that support a business or organization.

Operating Systems and Networks: Develop the basic software that computers use to supervise themselves or to communicate with other computers.

Software Applications: Apply computing and technology to solving problems outside the computer field - in education or medicine, for example.

Software Engineering: Develop methods for the production of software systems on time, within budget

Occupations post graduations

The following is a table of where our students go post graduation, though it’s hard to keep this table updates as career options for CS graduates keep expanding!

Alumni Stories

Salil vadhan ‘95.

Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Harvard University

After completing his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Computer Science at Harvard, Salil Vadhan received a C.A.S. in Mathematics from Cambridge University (1996) and then went on to earn his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at MIT (1999).

His primary research interests are in computational complexity theory, cryptography, randomness in computation, and the interplay between these areas.

Gary Schermerhorn ’85

Co-Chief Operating Officer for the Technology Division of Goldman Sachs, with operational oversight of the division’s business units* Schermerhorn joined Goldman Sachs (in Equity Systems) in New York in 1990, and has headed technology for the NASDAQ Business Group as well as the Asset Management Group.

He became a managing director in 1998 and a partner in 2000. In addition to gaining a lifelong friendship with Harvard College Professor Harry Lewis, Schermerhorn also met his wife, Miriam Esteve ‘85 (Applied Math), at Harvard. She now serves as Head of Operations and Technology for the Global Wealth Management Division of Citigroup.

Danielle Feinberg ‘96

Lead lighting artist at Pixar Animation Studios

As lead lighting artist at Pixar Animation Studios, Feinberg led the team that rendered the aquatic universe in Finding Nemo, from the surge and swell of plant life to the bounce and pop of billions of bubbles. Her exposure to computer graphics began at age eight with designing spirographs in LOGO.

Today she has a list of future classics to her credit, including A Bug’s Life ; Toy Story 2 ; Monsters, Inc. ; and most recently, The Incredibles and WAL-E .

CS empowers you to solve problems in all sorts of domains. Here’s where alumni since 1984 can be found:

033 Asset Management · 2Wire Inc. · AAA Northern California, Nevada, Utah · Ab Initio Software Corporation · Acccenture · Accel Partners · Accenture · Access Global Partners · Action Verb LLC · Active Endpoints, Inc. · Acumen Fund · AdNectar · Adobe Systems · Aegon · Agile Communications, Inc · Agilex Technologies · AIG · Akamai Technologies · Alliance Growth Equities · Alverno College · Amazon.com · Amdocs · American Express · Andera, Inc. · Angelo, Gordon · Apple, Inc. · AQR Capital Management · Aravo Solutions · AristoDigital · Asprova Corporation · AT Kearney Inc · Athenahealth, Inc. · Authoria, Inc. · Autodesk Inc · Autonomy · Bain Capital · Bainwood Huang & Associates · Barclays Capital · BBN Technologies · Beaver Lakefront Resort, Inc. · Bee North, LLC · Bellevue Hospital Center · BessemerVenture Partners · Big Tent Design · Bingham McCutchen · Blackhorse Asset Management · Bloomberg, LP · Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina · BlueCrest Capital Management Ltd · Booz Allen Hamilton · Boston Consulting Group · Boston Harbor Ship Yard and Marina #F3 · Boston University · Briar Rose LLC · Bridgewater Associates · Bronto Software, Inc · Building Educated Leaders for Life · CA, Inc. · California State University - Hayward · Caltech · Cambridge Semantics · Cardozo School of Law · Carnegie Mellon University · Children’s Hospital · Ciplex.com · Citadel · Citigroup · ClearNow, Inc. · Clever Machine · Cliff Island Software · CNA Insurance · CoBu Technology · Code Red · Cognex Corp · Colorado Technical University - Kansas City · Columbia Presbyterian Hospital · Columbia University/Harlem Hospital Center · CommonMind LLC · Computational Models Inc · Computer Partners Inc · Congregation B’nai Torah · Contra Costa Community College District · Council on Spiritual Practices · Credit Suisse · Credit Suisse First Boston · CrossTech Group · CTB/McGraw-Hill · Cuil · D. E. Shaw & Co. · Daiwa Securities America · Dangermarc Studios · Daniel’s Jewelers ·Danoo, Inc. · Dartmouth Medical School · Data Deletives · Davis Polk & Wardwell · DE Shaw & Co. · Deloitte & Touche · Department of Justice · DeSales University · Deutsche Bank · Diamond Management & Technology Consultants · Dimagi Inc. · Dixie State College · DOE/National Nuclear Security Administration · DoubleClick Inc. · DoubleDyno, Inc. · Dowling & Partners Securities, LLC · Draper Fisher Jurvetson · Eastport Analytics Inc · Eastwan Kodak Co · Effici LLC · Electroactive Inc · Ellington Management Group · EMC Corporation · EMC*2 Corp. · Endeca Technologies · Entelos, Inc. · etrials Worldwide, Inc · Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc · Facebook · FAS Computer Services · Feith Systems & Software, Inc. · Feldman Gale, P.A. · Fidelity Investments · First Potomac Realty Trust · Fish & Richardson P. C. · Five Oaks Technologies, Inc. · Flixster, Inc. · Fluidnet · Flybridge Capital Partners · Fore Research and Management · Forest View Elementary School · Franklin W Olin College of Engineering · Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center · frog design · GaoHua Securities Limited · Gartner, Inc · Genentech, Inc. · Goldman Sachs · Google · Goose Networks, Inc. · Greater Greater Washington · GreenRoad Technologies Inc · Greenwich Capital · Guardian Technologies International, Inc. · Guidewire Software · Harvard Business School · Harvard College · Harvard University · Hasbro, Inc. · Highland Financial Holdings Group · HLCSoft · Holland & Davis LLC · Horizon Asset International Limited · Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin · Hyperion Solutions · Idiom Technologies · IL2000 · iLike · Imagen Incorporated · IMakeNews, Inc. · Immunity, Inc. · Index Ventures · Industry Aspect LLC · Information Builders Inc · Ingeeni Studios, Inc. · Integrative Bodywork · Intel Corporation · Intel 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A Harvard Medical School professor with ADHD shares how he retrained his brain for deep work and reached peak productivity

• Dr. Jeffrey Karp grew up with undiagnosed ADHD, struggling to focus and answer questions in class.
• Using two tactics to retrain his brain, Karp gained confidence and pursued a career in academia. 
• The MIT and Harvard professor shares the benefits of working in a flow state in his new book .

As a professor at Harvard Medical School and MIT, I am very lucky; I get to learn from and collaborate with some of the most innovative minds in the world of medicine, science, and technology. But I was not "supposed" to be here. No one would have predicted this for me.

Growing up with undiagnosed ADHD

When I was a kid in elementary school in rural Canada, I had the attention span of a fruit fly, and I struggled to keep up. Reading, writing, classroom discussion, and teachers' instruction — I couldn't make sense of any of it.

It wasn't just that I was distractible and my brain didn't process things in a conventional way; my mind felt completely open to just existing in the world, in a constant mind meld with the universe. It took a ton of effort for me to narrow my focus so stuff could enter, stick, and stay.

And I was an anxious kid. I couldn't relax and just be myself, feel okay as "the quirky kid" because I felt like something worse than that: an alien, a human anomaly. I realized early on that there were many things I was "supposed" to do, but none of them came naturally or seemed logical.

More troubling still was that much of it didn't feel like the right thing to do; it felt actively wrong. When a teacher asked me a question, whether on a test or in class, I typically found the question confusing and often unanswerable. The "right" answer seemed like just one of many possibilities. So, most of my school years were an exercise in trying to figure out, interpret, and fit others' expectations.

I was a puzzle for my teachers, a misfit in the conventional academic sense, and a total outcast socially. Today, with society's much greater understanding of ADHD, part of my eventual diagnosis, there are evidence-based approaches for building self-regulation skills designed for kids (and adults). But at that time and in that place, the only option was to wing it.

Sea slugs were essential in helping me retrain my brain

Over the years, I slowly gained motivation and became more persistent. I didn't know it at the time but my evolution as a learner mirrored the two fundamental concepts of how neurons change and grow — how they learn — that the neuroscientist Eric Kandel would someday identify as the basis that sea slugs and humans have in common for learning and memory: habituation and sensitization in response to repeated exposure to stimuli.

Habituation means that we become less reactive to stimuli, as you might to traffic noise outside your window. Sensitization means that our reaction is stronger, as happens when, for instance, a sound or a smell or even the thought of something becomes a trigger.

Living my own experiment, I learned to make use of both.

I discovered some basic ways to work with my brain to habituate to some stimuli (ordinary things that distracted me) and sensitize (sharpen my attention) to others to be able to reel in my wandering mind and redirect the synaptic messaging with intention. At one point, in the room where I studied there was a pinball machine next to me and a TV behind me. I learned to ignore both and used playing the pinball machine as a reward for finishing my homework.

Over time I became hyperaware of how to intentionally hijack processes in my brain this way to be less reactive or more sharply focused as needed.

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The result: I was able to focus on what seemed most purposeful, then follow through and maximize impact as opportunities opened up. I tinkered and fine-tuned until I learned how to use these powerful tools to tap into the heightened state of awareness and deep engagement that I call "lit."

What is 'lit' focus

I call it "lit" for two reasons. First, "lit" aptly describes how the flash of inspiration feels—as if a bright light flipped on in the dark. Or a spark has set your thinking ablaze. When you've had an epiphany, been awestruck, or simply been super excited, you've felt that spark. Second, "lit" is how these moments appear to the scientists who study them. Inside the brain (and in the gut as well), engaged states activate neurons. In the brain, this triggers an increase in cerebral blood flow that neuroscientists can see when they use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

On a monitor, this oxygenated blood lights up an otherwise gray image of the brain with yellow-orange hot spots of activity. Emerging science shows that this neural activation is associated not only with particular cognitive activity or emotions such as fear and anger but also with love, awe, happiness, fun, and "peak states," or flow.

In "lit" mode, we engage at the highest level of our abilities. We not only develop the mental muscles to stay focused, but we also build the confidence and the dexterity to riff off of new information on the fly.

We're more likely to use our critical thinking skills, which can keep us from blindly accepting what we're told, or told to believe, especially when our intuition says otherwise. We find it easier to connect with people, are more alive to the possibilities all around us, and are better able to capitalize upon them. In a stream of ever-replenishing energy, we're constantly learning, growing, creating, and iterating. We're building our capacity while doing our best work.

As I honed strategies that enabled me to activate my brain this way at will, I identified a dozen that were simple to use and never failed to open my thinking in just the way that was needed, whatever that was.

Whether it was to direct my attention or disrupt it, sharpen my focus or broaden it, do something stimulating or quiet my mind, these Life Ignition Tools (LIT) worked for me, and then for others as I shared them.

Practicing habits that let me access deep work has been integral to my success

Once I learned how to work with my neuroatypical, voraciously curious, but chaotic brain, I discovered infinite opportunity to question, create, and innovate as a bioengineer and entrepreneur on a global scale and help others do the same. These LIT tools took me from being a confused and frustrated kid, sidelined in a special ed classroom in rural Canada, to becoming a bioengineer and medical innovator elected a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering's College of Fellows, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

As a professor, I've trained more than 200 people, many of whom are now professors at institutions around the world and innovators in industry; published 130 peer-reviewed papers with more than 30,000 citations; and obtained more than a hundred issued or pending national and international patents. The tools also helped me cofound 12 companies with products on the market or in development.

And finally, they've been instrumental in creating a productive, supportive, and dynamic high-energy environment in my lab, which recently morphed from Karp Lab to the Center for Accelerated Medical Innovation.

Having specific tools helped a struggling kid like me

LIT worked for this kid who appeared to show no promise and the young man who remained frustrated and discouraged for many years. Though I still struggle every day in various ways, I'm grateful to be able to say that these LIT tools enabled me to meet and far exceed those dismal early expectations.

If we want breakthroughs in science and medicine, if we want successful, disruptive innovations on all fronts to support healthier communities, and if we want to cut through the noise and focus on what is most important, we must learn how to use all of the tools in nature's playbook, our evolutionary arsenal. We must shake up our thinking — not just now and then but on a daily basis.

In practice, LIT tools make it possible for us to take anything we're hardwired for — including undesirable or unhelpful behaviors and habits — and with intention, channel the energy in them to create a positive outcome. It's easier than you might think because the more you do it, the greater the rewards, the momentum, and your impact for good.

You're never too old to charge your brain this way, and most definitely no one is ever too young. In fact, LIT tools can be lifesavers for kids, as they were for me.

Adapted from LIT: Use Nature's Playbook to Energize Your Brain, Spark Ideas, and Ignite Action by Jeff Karp, PhD, published by William Morrow. Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey Michael Karp. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollinsPublishers.

Watch: Microsoft CEO unravels ChatGPT, ethical AI, and going bust

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Massachusetts General Hospital, Medical Analytics Group

Math and data science internship.

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We are looking for a graduate-level student with good background in math to work on applied data science projects.

We are particularly interested in studying the stability of machine learning models. This will require good knowledge of math, numerical methods, linear and/or Boolean algebra.

The Medical Analytics Group works within the Imaging Department at MGH and delivers data-driven process improvement solutions to increase hospital efficiency and improve patients’ experiences. Our projects combine big data analysis with application development.

Work in the Medical Analytics Group is diverse and fast paced. Our recent projects have included designing nonlinear/AI models for predicting and optimizing clinical workflow, finding risk factors for various patient conditions,  performing complex clinical data analyses, developing new pattern-recognition algorithms.

Read more at http://mag.mgh.harvard.edu

Research.Com’s Top Mathematic Research Scientists

The Biostatistics Department is proud to be home to a number of  faculty rated by Reaserch.com as  among the top mathematics research scientists, on both a national and global level.   A report  with the annual ranking aims to increase the online visibility of both existing and rising mathematics experts.  We are particularly proud to recognize the research and contributions of  LJ Wei ,  Xihong Lin,  and  James Robins,  who are all included in the list.

Dr. Wei’s research is in the area of developing statistical methods for the design and analysis of clinical trials. In 1977-78 he introduced the “urn design” for two-arm sequential clinical studies. This design has been utilized in several large-scaled multi-center trials.  Dr. Wei has developed numerous methods for analyzing data with multiple outcome or repeated measurements obtained from study subjects. In particular, his “multivariate Cox procedures” to handle multiple event times have become quite popular. Currently, Dr. Wei and his colleagues are developing graphical and numerical methods for checking the adequacy of the Cox proportional hazards model, other semi-parametric survival models, parametric models, and random effects models for repeated measurements.

Dr.  Lin’s research interests lie in the development and application of scalable statistical and machine learning methods for the analysis of massive and complex genetic and genomic, epidemiological and health data. Some examples of her current research include analytic methods and applications for large scale Whole Genome Sequencing studies, biobanks and Electronic Health Records, techniques and tools for whole genome variant functional annotations, analysis of the interplay of genes and environment, multiple phenotype analysis, polygenic risk prediction and heritability estimation.

Dr. Robins is  best known for advancing methods for drawing causal inferences from complex observational studies and randomized trials, particularly those in which the treatment varies with time. In 1986, Robins introduced a new framework for drawing causal inference from observational data. He showed that in non-experimental data, exposure is almost always time-dependent, and that standard methods such as regression are therefore almost always biased. Robins described two new methods for controlling for confounding bias, which can be applied in the generalized setting of time-dependent exposures: the G-formula and G-Estimation of Structural Nested Models. Later, he introduced a third class of models, Marginal Structural Models, in which the parameters are estimated using inverse probability of treatment weights. He has also contributed significantly to the theory of dynamic treatment regimes, which are of high significance in comparative effectiveness research and personalized medicine.

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