Prince Charles may be nabbing all the headlines this week, but many organizers say that the real meat of the 350th celebration lies in the 106 educational seminars taking place during the next three days.

Designed to introduce the assembled company of educated men and women to current scholarship in most academic fields, symposia topics run the intellectual gamut from the Greek poet Homer to the latest discoveries about the AIDS virus.

Computer enthusiastists, Constitutional lawyers and China scholars should find something to interest them in the potpourri of forums, organizers say. But getting into the symposia may be more difficult than picking a favorite.

By mid-summer all of the free symposia tickets were gone as eager attendees snagged the limited number of slots. Until July, alumni and students could receive one free ticket for each of the five different time frames. Since alumni requests for tickets were honored first, few students will get a chance to attend.

The standing-room-only crowd is not surprising, considering the galaxy of luminaries--including two members of President Reagan's Cabinet, a Saudi Arabian sheik, and the cream of Harvard's professorial crop--slated to address crowds in the Yard and at most of the graduate schools.

With famous names like Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger '38 and unusual topics like "Theology in a Nuclear Age," the popularity of the symposia was inevitable.

"They cover a vast array of human knowlege. I'm planning to go to as many as I can," says Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy George B. Field. "They're an education in themselves." Field will also lead a seminar entitled "The Universe: The Beginning, Now and Henceforth."

The symposia, which consist almost exclusively of panel discussions moderated by Harvard professors, will begin at 2 p.m. today and will be held at six different time periods on September 4-7. Each seminar lasts approximately an hour and a half. Admission is free, but only ticket-holders will be admitted.

Celebrating the University's birthday with a flurry of scholarship is not a new Harvard tradition. In 1936, the 300th birthday party included 10 seminars on high-brow academic subjects. The sessions, by noted European scholars and for other scholars, lasted up to two weeks.

This time, however, academics won't be the only ones listening to winged-words at the symposia. The 350th birthday seminars will star members of the Harvard faculty, not outside specialists, and are aimed primarily at interested, intelligent laymen rather than other experts.

"We plan to talk at a level that someone with a Harvard education would know what's going on," says Parkman Professor of Divinity John B. Carman, who will run a symposium today about interaction between major religious groups.

Each symposium has been organized and sponsored by one of Harvard's 10 faculties or by Radcliffe College and most panelists say they plan to attend other seminars in addition to their own.

"Someone said to me that if you could attend all they symposia, it would be the equivalent to a Harvard education," Thomas W. Stephenson '37, the 350th coordinator, said earlier this summer. "[The symposia program] "will be a rich smorgasbord with an all-star class."

But Professor of Sociology Ezra F. Vogel notes that attending the symposia "would be more like attending the concluding lecture of 100 courses rather than getting the depth of 32 half courses."

"The symposia are well-rounded presentations for alumni, but these are all special subjects," says Higgenson Professor of History Emeritus, John King Fairbank '41, who will lead a seminar on the modernization of China. "They don't provide the systematic pictures an undergraduate needs."