President Bok evidently wasn't too worried about the shop this summer--he took off for a two-month "working" vacation in fray.

Nor was John B. Fox Jr. '59, dean of the College--he found time to take a few weeks in England with his family. And Dean of Students Archive C. Epps III went to England too as he normally does each summer, to the country city of Bath.

Still, the place didn't shut down entirely Harvard won a long standing dispute with another college over a major federal research grant A number of academic departments gained new tenured professors. And throughout the University, numerous scientists made headlines for new discoveries.

Ed School Grant

Harvard officials breathed a sigh of reef when the government upheld a $7 million grant to the Graduate School of Education for a school-technology center.

The ruling by the General Accounting Office (GAO) marked an important step in resolving year-old charges that the National Institute of Education (NIE) played favorites by awarding the money to Harvard over Bank St. College of New York.

Bank St. had argued that the award was improper because the NIE director, Manuel J. Justiz, had ignored the advice of a technical review panel that the New York college get the money instead. The panel gave Bank St. slightly higher marks for technical merit and economy, but Justiz was understood to have chosen Harvard because of the larger scope of its proposal and its greater resources.

Bank St. was also angry over charges that another NIE official had given Harvard and MIT, which was also bidding for the grant, an unfair advantage by informing the schools that their bids were $2 million over the agency's estimate for the project.

Both Harvard and MIT subsequently lowered their bids to near NIE's $7.7 million figure while Bank St. remained unaware that it had underbid dramatically with its $4.5 million proposal.

In squashing Bank St.'s complaints, the GAO ruled that the regulations governing the competition were matters of internal policy guidance--not law--and hence not grounds for disallowing the contract. Bank St. has vowed, to appeal, but time rolls on and Harvard's new center will soon move into its second year of operation.

Discoveries

Students leave Cambridge in June, but most professors do not, especially scientists, whose lab experiments do not run by the academic calendar. The past summer saw a number of Harvard scientists step into the limelight with the announcement of a new finding or discovery.

For Carlo Rubbia, public attention is becoming old hat. Rubbia, professor of Physics, smashes atoms--a particularly fruitful line of work of late--and he has been doing ground-breaking experimentation that scientists hope will confirm much recent theoretical thinking about the forces of nature.

This summer Rubbia found the sixth quark, one of the most sought-after discoveries in modern physics. Quarks are thought to be the basic building blocks of all larger atomic particles. Scientists have long predicted the existence of six quarks; five were known, and Rubbia's finding completed the roster.

Harvard scientists also announced progress in another hot area of scientific research--the battle to fight Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). A number of researchers at the School of Public Health have been at the forefront of the fight against this often deadly killer, which has disproportionately affected gay men.