Navin Narayan '99

An Adams House resident who received his A.B. summa cum laude in social studies shortly before his death, Navin Narayan '99 died March 13 of cancer. He was 23.

Narayan was a Rhodes scholar and had hoped to become a doctor. He worked throughout high school and college with the American Red Cross, becoming the organization's youngest national committee chair ever in 1998.

But Narayan is remembered by those close to him less for his accomplishments than for his gentle way with people.

"He was easily the most humble and unassuming person I have ever met," said Otto Coontz, the assistant to the Adams House senior tutor.

Narayan's life work was in the field of international health. Having volunteered with his local chapter of the Red Cross since eighth grade, Narayan was asked to speak before the national organization when he was 17. Just months before, he had been diagnosed with facial cancer.

Recently, Narayan spent time in India, where his grandparents live, collecting data on the adverse health effects of child labor for the advocacy group, Physicians For Human Rights.

At a memorial service in May, Adams House Master Judith Palfrey '67 announced that a lecture series and an annual public service award had been established in Narayan's memory.

Benjamin I. Schwartz '38

A pioneering scholar who, at the height of the Cold War, first noted the differences between Chinese and Soviet communism, Benjamin I. Schwartz '38, died Nov. 14 of cancer. He was 82.

Schwartz, a specialist in Chinese history and thought, began teaching at Harvard in 1951. He retired in 1987 as Williams professor of history and political science.

In the 1950s, Schwartz was the first to publish a major study--his first book, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao--that treated Chinese communism as an ideology substantively different from Soviet communism.

Schwartz was best known among his colleagues for the breadth of his knowledge, from ancient to modern Chinese history and from Western to Chinese thinkers.

Schwartz maintained his Harvard connections after he retired, coming to campus to write and converse with colleagues into late October.