Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on English and American Literatue and Language Jill McCorkle also recently published a collection of stories in a book titled "Crash Diet." McCorkle, too, publishes reviews in the Times' Sunday book section.

Authorities on Everything

Harvard is full of experts, in fact--including the world's leading authority on ants, Baird Professor of Science E.O. Wilson. Wilson recently received his second Pulitzer Prize for The Ants, a gigantic volume that served as a basis for the computer game SimAnt. His popular Core course, "Evolutionary Biology," contains a large unit on ant social behavior.

Disagreeing with Wilson on just about everything having to do with heredity versus environment is Stephen Jay Gould, Agassiz professor of zoology. Gould, another Harvard science hotshot, often teaches a Core science course of his own.

Harvard has more than 30 Nobel laureates, many of whom still teach here. They include Baird Professor of Science Dudley R. Herschbach, Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry Elias J. Corey, Higgins Professor of Physics Sheldon L. Glashow and Loeb University Professor Walter Gilbert.

To be granted lifetime positions at Harvard, professors generally need to be the best in their fields--and that often means they are swiped from other universities. Junior professors are told upon arrival here that they will likely leave the University. Rarely is an associate professor given tenure after seven years in the lower ranks--although some leave Harvard only to return when they achieve more notoriety.

Undergraduates often complain that Harvard loses some of the best teachers in the faculty when it passes over popular junior faculty members in favor of bigger names. Some of the professors who play the biggest roles in students' lives are considered too small to fill the gaping shoes of a tenured Harvard luminary.

And these are just the folks who work here. Don't forget that Harvard also attracts stars from around the world who come for just a visit. In February, for example, news of Barbara Streisand's visit to Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government made the front page of the New York Times. And speaking of Kennedys, John F. Kennedy Jr. is a frequent visitor to the school. The fellows at the K-School's (as it is called) Institute of Politics often include famous politicians and luminaries on the rise.

So if you're into star gazing, you've come to the right place. Just don't let it go to your head when you pass, say, the King and Queen of Spain, as you head across the Yard for Chem 10 lecture.