Degrees from the old times 05-28

History by degrees

In all shapes and sizes, diplomas of the 17th and 18th centuries provide glimpses of their eras

 This diploma for George Alcock, A.B. 1673, is the earliest known example in the Harvard University Archives. It is dated April 19, 1676

Graduates received something at Commencement they could keep: a uniformly sized, textually common diploma in Latin. (Medical diplomas were first given out in 1817, and law diplomas in 1827.) Before the era of printed diplomas, any graduate who needed a document attesting to a Harvard degree (usually for travel overseas) hired a local calligrapher to pen an inscription on parchment. Then he — always “he” in those days — paid the Harvard president to sign it. When it came to 17th- and 18th-century diplomas, you “rolled your own,” wrote historian Samuel Eliot Morison.

Because of this practice, surviving Harvard diplomas from that time come in all shapes and sizes. They have only one thing in common: Latin text, including names and signatures. The first Harvard graduate to have a diploma made was James Ward, a minister’s son who earned his A.B. degree in 1645, despite an earlier public whipping by Dunster for burgling a local residence. He moved to England, and used his Harvard degree to gain admittance to Oxford. The earliest known diploma in the Harvard collections is that of George Alcock, who received his A.B. in 1673. Dated 1676, it is Puritan-plain and conspicuously small, about 10 inches by 6. Many archived examples, however, are elaborately inscribed, fitted with ribbons and seals, and ostentatiously large. For his 1769 A.B., Thomas Kast ordered up a flashy sheepskin 24 inches wide.

None of the 29 Harvard diplomas from those early centuries — despite bursts of fanciful filigree — could be called fine art. Even strictly as documents, they have limited utility for historians since they merely confirm identities and dates of graduation, which were already recorded in the Triennial Catalogs of that era. (The first catalog was printed in 1674 on the press at the Indian College — as a broadside. Not until 1776 was Harvard’s list of graduates large enough to merit a pamphlet.)

But there is undeniable magic to the originals, penned on paper or skin and anchored by the ornate signatures of people from Harvard’s resonant far past. Urian Oakes, Harvard’s fourth president, signed Alcock’s diploma. He steered the College through the bloody years of King Philip’s War. Increase Mather, Harvard’s last resolutely Puritan president, signed his son Samuel’s 1701 master of arts diploma. In 1839, legendary law professor Joseph Story, who taught at Harvard while a justice of the Supreme Court, signed the diploma of LL.B. graduate Henry Mason. So did Harvard President Josiah Quincy III, who had a sound head for business and an iron fist for student discipline.

Vintage diplomas and other Commencement documents may also reflect dramatic historical realities. The Triennial Catalog for 1682, which lists 1665 College graduate Caleb Cheesechaumuk as an “Indus,” also reveals the demographic fragility of 17th-century Harvard. There are no graduates listed for 1644, 1648, and 1672, and only one each in 1652 and 1654. (The 17th century produced only 439 graduates, about one-quarter the number of the Class of 2014; of those 17th-century graduates, 132 — 30 percent — died before the onset of the next century.) Soon came the era of “general degree diplomas,” published in lieu of Commencements cancelled because of war, disease, or economic depression. The earliest general diploma at the Harvard University Archives is for 1752, the year of a smallpox outbreak in Boston.

Other diplomas in the Harvard archives signal other kinds of drama, like the one for Gertrude McDonald, whose A.B. was granted in 1894, the first year of the new Radcliffe College. The Schlesinger Library has in its vaults three proofs that women belonged at Harvard all along: the diplomas given to Ruth Lansing — for a bachelor’s degree in 1908, a master’s in 1909, and a Ph.D. in 1914. “It’s not just a piece of paper with a name,” said Schlesinger research librarian Sarah M. Hutcheon of each old diploma. “There’s a story behind it.”

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Target: New ways to battle disease 07-15

Target: New ways to battle disease

Broad researchers tap human genome in hunt for effective medicines

By Edward Mason, Harvard Correspondent

For decades, developing medicine to treat disease was a lengthy and often discouraging process: create a drug, test on a lab animal, hold a human clinical trial, and hope to calibrate an effective dose to kill the disease without devastating the patient.

Now, researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and the MIT are tapping the human genome mapped by its founders, hoping to create effective treatments for vexing afflictions.

“When you rely on biology — not models but real humans — to reveal the root cause of the disease, the good news is you can discover insights for even the most daunting ones, like schizophrenia,” said Stuart L. Schreiber, Ph.D. ’81, director of the year-old Center for the Science of Therapeutics.

Schreiber made his remarks Wednesday during a presentation on “The Road to Vital Therapy,” part of the Broad’s midsummer science lecture series. More than 500 people registered for the event, which focused on the institute’s efforts in what it called “chemistry-enabled, patient-based drug discovery.”

Schreiber, who is also Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biography at Harvard, said drug discovery over the past 40 years has been a “daunting” process that can take as long as 15 years, fail 90 percent of the time, and often miss its mark.

“When you rely on biology — not models but real humans — to reveal the root cause of the disease, the good news is you can discover insights for even the most daunting ones, like schizophrenia,” said Stuart L. Schreiber.

Rather than focusing on traditional experiments, Broad researchers look to biology and chemistry — what Schreiber called “experiments in nature.” One is underway on Crohn’s disease, a painful inflammatory bowel ailment that afflicts as many as 700,000 Americans; it is expected to yield fruitful results.

Broad researchers know that some Crohn’s genes are normal, some are not, and others protect against the disease. The institute’s goal is to find a drug therapy that fixes the gene that gives a person Crohn’s.

Schreiber said a remaining challenge is that the work identifying genetic targets is too advanced for the chemists devising medical therapies. The Crohn’s gene target “pocket” that would hold the medicine is three-dimensional, while most drugs are two. Broad scientists are working on a solution.

Genomic information isn’t a magic elixir, though. James E. Bradner ’94, associate director of the Center for Science of Therapeutics and an investigator at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said that researchers thought when the human genome was sequenced, drugs could be made for each cancer-causing mutation.

It turns out that there are a million unique cancer mutations in 24,000 genes. Many are passenger mutations — those caused by “smoking, chewing tobacco, breathing air, or bad luck.” At least 480 contribute to cancer, while 149 are known to cause it, Bradner said.

Like Schreiber, Bradner believes that new drugs aimed at single genetic targets are the answer, when the technology to create them catches up.

“We need new technologies, multiple avenues of therapy targeting these” mutations, said Bradner, a physician-scientist who is also an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. “One of the obstacles is we may not have the technology we need.”

Schreiber, speaking afterward, said he is hopeful that genomics and chemistry can be integrated to develop drugs to undermine stubborn diseases.

“I’m optimistic because there’s a blueprint, a roadmap to get there,” Schreiber said. “It’s not going to be easy, but it’s very different from 10 years ago, when you didn’t know how difficult or easy it would be when you didn’t have the roadmap. Now, we just need to keep a laser focus.”

Vivian Siegel, director of education and outreach, moderated. Alykhan Shamji ’00, Ph.D ’05, executive director of the Broad’s Center for the Science of Therapeutics, Michael A. Foley, director of the Therapeutics Platform, and Brian Hubbard, director of the center’s Therapeutics Projects Group, also were on the panel.

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The Harvard Film Archive centennial moment 07-14

In 40 films, story of a screen great

Harvard festival covers rise of Paramount Pictures

Courtesy of Harvard Film Archive

The Billy Wilder 1944 classic "Double Indemnity" features a young Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. The Harvard Film Archive is celebrating a centennial moment in cinema history with a blockbuster film series July 13 through Sept. 3.

By Corydon IrelandHarvard Staff WriterThursday, July 12, 2012

Marlon Brando, Cecil B. DeMille, Patricia Neal, Preston Sturges, John Wayne, Billy Wilder. Such names that dreams are made on. Cinema dreams.

Now you can dream deep. The Harvard Film Archive is celebrating a centennial moment in cinema history with a blockbuster film series July 13 through Sept. 3.

One hundred years ago today (July 12) the Famous Players Film Company aired its first production — an imported four-reeler starring Paris-born Sarah Bernhardt as Elizabeth I. It was the beginning of one of the most important movie studios in American history: Paramount Pictures, as it was so named by 1914.

"The Lost Weekend," a 1945 film directed by Billy Wilder, features Ray Milland as Don Birnem.

Paramount was the brainchild of Adolph Zukor, a Hungarian immigrant who by age 21 was already a wealthy New York furrier. He was also an early investor in nickelodeons, the 5-cent theaters popular in the first decade of the 20th century. Paramount — with co-founders Jesse L. Lasky and Cecil B. DeMille — helped establish an organizational template for the modern film business, combining production and distribution under one roof.

In 1912, part of the challenge was to lure famous stage actors into a novel, flickering, silent medium. Zukor bought the American rights to “La Reine Elisabeth” (“Queen Elizabeth”), an hourlong film whose main draw was Bernhardt — already 68, but the most famous actress of the 19th century. After that, well-known stage actors — the “famous players” of the company name — flocked to the new medium.

Paramount followed with a star system of its own, cultivating early screen legends like Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, and Douglas Fairbanks. The Harvard festival — 40 films in all — shows them off. The earliest, set for Aug. 26, is “The Cheat” (1915), starring 40-year-old Fannie Ward, whose eerily young looks later earned her the title “perennial flapper.” The most recent film in the series is “S.O.B.” (1981), a Blake Edwards vehicle starring Julie Andrews and, in his last film role, William Holden. Fittingly, it’s a spoof of Hollywood.

The 1966 film titled "Seconds," which was directed by John Frankenheimer, features Rock Hudson as Murray Hamilton.

The festival does not include Bernhardt’s gyrations and chest-clutching in “Elizabeth.” (You can see the whole film here.) But “The Cheat” is even a more perceptive choice. For one, it’s a melodrama that explored infidelity, sexual tension, and interracial romance — themes that Hollywood two decades later had to deal with in a more muted way.

In 1930, the Motion Picture Production Code banned film scenes involving profanity, nudity, drug use, and other forbidden subject matter. It also listed cautionary images, such as a man and a woman in bed together. On Sept. 1, the Harvard festival offers “Hot Saturday,” an all-night marathon of Paramount films shot in “pre-Code” Hollywood.

So brace for — among others — “White Woman,” “She Done Him Wrong,” and “The Wild Party.” The last is a 1929 Clara Bow vehicle set at an all-girl college, complete with a handsome professor (Fredric March) and a costume party with plenty of drinking.

Toga!

The Harvard Film Archive series, “100 Years of Paramount Pictures,” runs July 13-Sept. 3 at 24 Quincy St., Cambridge. Ticket prices: general admission $9; non-Harvard students, $7; seniors citizens and Harvard students, faculty, and staff, free.


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