Rudenstine even moved to bring the byzantine financial mechanisms of Harvard's disparate parts together in one unified, centralized system, a program, still underway, that has proved overwhelmingly difficult.

And there was Radcliffe. For 25 years, Harvard's sister college had stood next door, occupying an incongruous and, to some, incomprehensible position as the de jure alma mater of Harvard's female undergraduates. It offered no classes and employed no faculty, but clung to its aging alumni body and charged Harvard rent on the use of Byerly Hall for its admissions office, presumably in order to pay the salaries of its burgeoning administrative ranks.

Late in his presidency, word leaked out that the president was working toward a new agreement between the schools that would resolve the relationship once and for all.

At times, negotiations between Harvard and Radcliffe were tense, so tense that they nearly fell through. But by last spring, Rudenstine could claim a victory that his predecessors could not. Radcliffe College had been dissolved, and in its place would stand an "Institute for Advanced Studies," reminiscent of Rudenstine's native Princeton.

Rudenstine has also pushed to bring the Harvard education beyond the walls of Harvard Yard and even the confines of Cambridge and Boston. He initiated new Harvard academic centers around the world--in East Asia, for example--and took steps to make classes available over the Internet in "distance learning" programs.

High Office

But though Rudenstine will be able to point to a list of achievements, some with important implications for the quality of life at Harvard, his low-key operating style has in many ways left the presidency weaker than he found it.

Rudenstine is mild-mannered to the extreme, announcing his resignation today to some of his closest University allies by e-mail. He shuns the spotlight and prefers to let others take credit for big achievements.