Ladee Hubbard is a writer whose most recent novel is “The Rib King” (Amistad, 2021). In this lecture, she will discuss her current project, a novel that examines the implications of the ways in which Black people in the United States have historically been represented as an internal threat to both public health and safety, placing the 1980s War on Drugs in dialogue with the larger history of African Americans being used in drug trials and medical experiments.

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Explore the rich diversity of frogs by observing and sketching 3D models printed from Harvard’s research collections. Artist and educator, Erica Beade, will introduce techniques for achieving accurate shapes and capturing volume in your drawings, while herpetologist and researcher, Dr. Mara Laslo, will explain how evolution has generated their amazing diversity. Groups will be limited to twelve, allowing ample time for questions and discussion.

Cost: $40 for members, $45 for nonmembers.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly permeating many facets of our lives, raising both hope and concern about possibilities for our future. AI is transforming domains as disparate as science, medicine, commerce, government, law, the military, and the arts, and in doing so, it is forcing us to grapple with practical, political, and philosophical questions about humans and the nature of human interaction. The Harvard Radcliffe Institute Science Symposium, featuring speakers from disparate disciplines and industries, will examine AI, its impact, and its ethics by exploring current and...

Join the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian for a virtual Public Observatory Night with guest lecturer Donavan Moore, author of "What Stars Are Made Of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin."

It was not easy being a woman of ambition in early twentieth-century England, much less one who wished to be a scientist. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin overcame prodigious obstacles to become a woman of many firsts: the first to receive a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College, the first promoted to full professor at Harvard, the first to head a department there. And, in what...

Ancient Maya civilization suffered a major demise between the tenth and eleventh centuries. The causes continue to be investigated and debated. Paleoenvironmental research over the past twenty years has revealed that the demise coincided with a prolonged, intensive drought that extended across the region, providing compelling evidence that climate change played a key role in the collapse of the Maya. Billie Turner will examine this evidence and the complex social and environmental conditions that affected Maya societies.

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Join the Harvard Museum Natural History for a public lecture with Robert McCracken Peck, Curator of Art and Artifacts, Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University.

Edward Lear (1812–1888), best known for The Owl and the Pussycat and other nonsense poetry, was also an accomplished painter of birds, mammals, reptiles, and landscapes, and an adventurous world traveler. His paintings of parrots, macaws, toucans, owls, and other birds are among the finest ever published. Robert McCracken Peck will discuss the remarkable life and natural history paintings of this...

Pulsation permeates the universe at every scale, from heartbeats to pulsars. Join the artist Dario Robleto and the astrophysicist Abraham (Avi) Loeb, both of whom engage deeply with pulsatility in their work, for a conversation on how the arts and sciences can explore a common set of understandings.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. 

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For centuries, in both the arts and the sciences, the human heart has been a source of reverence and marvel. In this conversation, the artist Dario Robleto, whose exhibition at the Radcliffe Institute rethinks the deep history of cardiological recording, and Doris A. Taylor, a leading scientist in regenerative medicine, will discuss the surprising opportunities for both the arts and sciences to converge around new insights and questions of the human heart.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. 

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Lily Simonson and Peter Girguis exemplify the long tradition of artists and scientists working in tandem to explore new worlds—in their case, the magnificent deep sea. Simonson will discuss how the immersive, glowing canvases in her current exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Lily Simonson: Painting the Deep, have been shaped by collaborations with scientists—whether exploring the depths of the ocean in a submersible or scuba diving beneath Antarctic sea ice. Girguis will reveal how working at sea with an artist has shaped his research and enabled him to see...

Anna Von Mertens is an exhibited artist who uses the structures of quilting and drawing to explore the frontiers of human understanding. Her new exhibition "Measure" explores the life and work of Henrietta Leavitt, one of the women “computers” hired to study glass-plate astronomical photographs at the Harvard College Observatory a century ago. Leavitt’s findings provided a unit of measurement for galactic distances. Reimagined in meticulous stitches and intricate graphite marks, Von Mertens examines our current understanding of the size and shape of...

Miaki Ishii, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University

Recent volcanic eruptions in Hawaii and Guatemala remind us of how devastating these geological eruptions can be. Popular culture depictions of volcanic disasters found in movies like Dante’s Peak and Volcano can strongly distort the public’s understanding of volcanic activity and its immediate effects. As with many science-fiction films, Hollywood depictions of natural phenomena don’t always align with the scientific facts. Seismologist Miaki...

Dr. Yvonne Cagle is a NASA Astronaut and Family Physician. In 2008, Dr. Cagle retired as a Colonel in the USAF where she served as a Senior... Read more about Dr. Yvonne Cagle

The Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities (CGBC) retrofitted its headquarters, a pre-1940s house in Cambridge, MA, into a first-of-its-kind test case to demonstrate unprecedented levels of building efficiency and promote substantial shifts in the design and operation of existing buildings. Dubbed “HouseZero,” the project aims to prove that ultra-efficient retrofits can, indeed, be achieved...

A Holiday Science Lecture for Children and their Families: Join us at the 2017 Holiday Science Lecture as we explore the science behind the... Read more about Hold Your Temper: Celebrating the Science of Chocolate

A discussion of origin stories with Stephen Greenblatt (Harvard University), Meredith Reiches (University of Massachusetts Boston), and Richard... Read more about Garden Party: From Genesis to The Descent of Man

The Mahindra Humanities Center and the Office of the President at Harvard present the Tanner Lectures on Human Values: Bryan... Read more about Social Justice Action: How We Change the World

Abusir, the “Place of Osiris,” is a necropolis (burial site) near the Old Kingdom’s city of Memphis, known for its pyramids and sun... Read more about Egypt's Old Kingdom