1999
Radcliffe College and Harvard University officially merge, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is founded as an integral part of the University. Mary Maples Dunn RI '02, director of the Schlesinger Library and former president of Smith College, is named interim leader of the Institute.
2000
Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine appoints the first dean of the Radcliffe Institute: Drew Gilpin Faust, Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.
2000
A Radcliffe Institute employee, Scott Sandberg, wins an award from the city of Cambridge for launching the Radcliffe recycling program and increasing recycling from 25 to 75 percent—in one year. The Institute continues to lead recycling efforts at the University.
2001
The Radcliffe Fellowship Program is launched with a mandate to include men as well as women and to represent a wide range of academic disciplines, professions, and creative arts. Judith Vichniac, an expert on Western European politics with a background in interdisciplinary studies, is recruited to direct the program.
2001
Dean Faust recruits academic leaders to help carry out the mission of the Radcliffe Institute. They include Nancy F. Cott, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library and the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History; Barbara J. Grosz, dean of science at the Radcliffe Institute and Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences; and Katherine S. Newman, dean of social science at the Radcliffe Institute and the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Urban Studies at the Kennedy School of Government.
2001
Natasha Trethewey RI ’01 completes her second poetry collection, Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), and begins research for her third, Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), for which she wins the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2007.
Photo credits: Neil L. Rudenstine courtesy of Radcliffe Archives; Judith Vichniac and Natasha Trethewey by Tony Rinaldo; Nancy F. Cott by Kathleen Dooher
2002
Much-acclaimed and best-selling novelist Zadie Smith RI ’03 arrives at the Radcliffe Institute, where she works on her third novel, On Beauty (Penguin Press, 2005). The book earns her the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2006.
2002
Filmmaker Jeanne Jordan BI '93, RI ’03—whose Academy Award–nominated documentary feature, Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern, was partly edited during an earlier Bunting fellowship—arrives at Radcliffe to edit another film, So Much So Fast, about three brothers and their families who are battling the fatal neural disease ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The documentary has its premiere at Sundance and is broadcast around the world.
2003
Barbara J. Grosz, then dean of science, creates the Institute’s first research cluster, on the topic of cosmology, laying the groundwork for future cross-disciplinary collaborations. Four planetary scientists and theoretical physicists from around the world—including MIT’s Maria Zuber RI ’03 and Harvard’s Lisa Randall ’84, PhD ’87, RI ’03—meet weekly to ponder unanswered questions about our universe and spark cross-institutional collaboration in the form of a lecture series. In 2004, Zuber becomes the first woman to lead a science department at MIT. Randall goes on to publish a well-received book, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions (Ecco, 2005), which explains particle physics to a general audience; she is named to the Time 100, an annual list of the most influential Americans, in 2007.
2003
In its second annual event to focus on issues related to women, gender, and society, the Radcliffe Institute celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of the Schlesinger Library with an all-day conference on African American women’s history.
2004
As a junior faculty member, Salil Vadhan ’95, RI ’05 brings together six leading theoretical computer scientists from around the world to study the interplay between randomness and computation. He is subsequently appointed a Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics and director of the Center for Research on Computation and Society in Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Photo credits: Zadie Smith, Lisa Randall, and Salil Vadhan by Tony Rinaldo; Maria Zuber by Webb Chappell
2004
Hans Hoffmann, now an assistant professor of cell and molecular biology at the University of Texas at Austin, and William Gelbart, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, organize an Exploratory Seminar with the intention of forming a Cichlid Genome Consortium to develop a whole-genome sequencing of the fish. The group composes a white paper and submits it to the National Human Genome Research Initiative, and that proposal is approved for four cichlid species in 2006.
2005
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America reopens after a yearlong renovation with a gala celebration and a conference, “Feminism on the Record: ReViewing the 1960s and 1970s.” The library’s renovation is the first of the Institute’s three state-of-the-art green renovations, with a high rate of reuse and recycling of materials. The 110-year-old Radcliffe Gymnasium follows in 2006, and Byerly Hall in 2008.
2006
Caroline Elkins RI ’04, the Hugh K. Foster Associate Professor of African Studies at Harvard, wins the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (Holt, 2005), which she wrote during her Radcliffe fellowship. Elkins earns tenure at Harvard in spring 2009.
2006
Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Geraldine Brooks RI ’06 writes her novel People of the Book (Viking, 2008) while at Radcliffe. She relies on the butterfly expertise of biologist Naomi Pierce RI ’06 for a major plot point. Once published, the book garners praise from the New York Times and NPR; spends nine consecutive weeks on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list; and wins four awards, including the New England Book Award for Fiction.
2006
Engineers, physicians, scientists, students, and businesspeople flock to Radcliffe’s science symposium, “Frontiers of Tissue Engineering,” cosponsored by Harvard’s Division (now School) of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The symposium is so popular that registration must be closed in advance. As a result of speaking at the symposium, Christine Mummery RI ’08, a professor at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research in the Netherlands, joins the Radcliffe Institute as a fellow and collaborates with Kevin (Kit) Parker of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to find a way to put new heart cells into damaged hearts.
Photo credits: Hans Hoffmann by Tom McHugh; Caroline Elkins by Webb Chappell; Geraldine Brooks by Tony Rinaldo; Christine Mummery by Krijn Van Noordwijk
2006
Sarah Sze RI ’06 displays her installation Corner Plot, which she developed during her fellowship, at the corner of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue in Central Park, to much acclaim. The New York Times calls the site-specific work “magical,” saying that it “scores a rare public-art hat trick: it appeals to the cognoscenti, intrigues random passers-by, and delights children.”
2006
Dmitri Tymoczko RI ’06—a composer, music theorist, and assistant professor at Princeton University—publishes “The Geometry of Musical Chords,” the first paper on music theory to appear in the journal Science in its 127-year history.
2006
Katharine Park RI ’04, Samuel Zemurray, Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of the History of Science at Harvard, leads an Exploratory Seminar titled “Remaking Sex in Classical, Medieval, and Early Modern Medicine.” She also publishes Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (Zone Books, 2006), on which she worked during her fellowship year.
2007
The Institute establishes a five-year strategic plan for the Schlesinger Library. The plan includes an initiative to collect and preserve born-digital materials while also digitizing existing collections, and emphasizes a commitment to diversifying the library’s collections.
2007
Radcliffe Institute Founding Dean Drew Gilpin Faust is named the twenty-eighth president of Harvard University.
2007
Claire Messud RI ’05 wins the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, presented by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, for her novel The Emperor’s Children (Knopf, 2007), which she completed at the Radcliffe Institute.
Photo credits: Kevin (Kit) Parker, Dmitri Tymoczko, and Drew Gilpin Faust by Tony Rinaldo; Sarah Sze courtesy of the Gap
2008
After serving as interim dean, Radcliffe Institute Dean of Science Barbara J. Grosz is named dean of the Institute.
2008
Already well known for his powerful short stories, Junot Díaz RI ’04 wins the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead, 2007). Díaz wrote part of the novel during his Radcliffe fellowship year.
2008
The Schlesinger Library displays a 1902 book by Susan B. Anthony in its exhibition Women of Spirit: Religion, Voice, and Social Justice. Volume IV of the History of Woman Suffrage features a handwritten inscription by Anthony that reads in part, “This closes the records of the 19th century of work done by and for women—What the 20th century will show—no one can foresee—but that it will be vastly more and better—we cannot fail to believe—But you and I have done the best we knew and so must rest content—leaving all to younger hands.”
2008
Biologist Susan Lindquist RI ’08, the Suzanne Young Murray Fellow, wins the Otto Warburg Medal from the German Association of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for her work on protein misfolding. The medal is considered the most prestigious prize in biochemistry in Germany, and seven recipients have subsequently received the Nobel Prize.
2008
Frank Dobbin RI ’07, a professor of sociology and director of graduate studies in Harvard’s Department of Sociology, convenes an Exploratory Seminar on the topic of discrimination at work.
2009
Through its “backlog project,” the Schlesinger Library processes hundreds of file boxes and catalogs twenty long-bypassed collections. The project continues today.
2009
Dean Grosz establishes the Academic Engagement Programs to help spur new multidisciplinary collaborations crossing the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. A seed planted with the formation of the first cluster grows into a more strategic program that also engages Harvard faculty members and students in new scholarly and research endeavors.
Photo credits: Barbara J. Grosz by Kathleen Dooher; Junot Diaz by Joseph Shneberg; Susan Lindquist and Frank Dobbin by Tony Rinaldo
