Derek C. Bok, by then the lame-duck president of the University, had embarked on a visionary program during his time in Mass. Hall, seeking to unify the famously decentralized branches of the University and spread Harvard's operations around the globe.

All of this took money, however, and the economy was not then performing at today's breakneck pace. With Bok's departure, a new president, one who would be able to fill the University's dwindling coffers, was needed. From the ranks of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation emerged Rudenstine.

Almost immediately after his appointment, Rudenstine brought the deans of Harvard's ten schools together and quickly realized that the University would need to hit the streets to fill its pockets. Soon he had announced the first-ever University-wide fundraising campaign, aiming to raise an unprecedented $2.1 billion, more money than the total endowments of most American universities.

Some said it couldn't be done. And yet five years later, the campaign is set to meet its goal and then some, with Harvard pocketing an extra $100 million that no one had planned on. New programs flourished, renovations were planned, new buildings sprung up, financial aid grew and classes decreased in size, with the only casualty being Rudenstine's health along the way.

Harvard's endowment now stands at nearly $15 billion , a testament to Rudenstine's endless pressing the flesh.

Rudenstine also came to Harvard aiming to take on the way the schools beneath the Harvard umbrella do business. The central administration of the University, headquartered in Mass. Hall, had very little power over the branches of the school that--theoretically--answered to it.

Each dean of Harvard's ten schools, from the Medical School to the Law School to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), saw his own administration as sacrosanct. They competed against each other for alumni dollars and real estate and considered any intervention by the University as a whole unacceptable.

But Rudenstine did the unthinkable, bringing them together for the capital campaign and long-range planning. He kicked off a series of academic programs that lived in the interstices of the different schools, such as the Mind, Brain, Behavior track, which drew on faculty from not only the biology and psychology departments, but also the Medical School.