Last July, Rudenstine welcomed his last class of first-years to the College with a letter of advice and musings on his own intellectual interests. Rudenstine wrote,

"I am not a scientist, and I continue to regret that I did not press myself harder to study more science in secondary school and college."

He continued, "Mathematics and the sciences are not only deeply absorbing and compelling in themselves; they are linked in fundamental ways to the structure of knowledge and understanding in many fields of learning."

As Harvard's eminent fundraiser, Rudenstine certainly knows that in the reality of the modern university, science is what makes news and patents are what make money. Science gets people excited--and provides tangible benefits to society in the form of technology.

And Rudenstine has championed throughout his time as president the idea of "inter-faculty initiatives" that would allow faculty at different schools and in different areas to work together on problems that may be too complex--or too expensive--for any one part of the University to tackle on its own. Many of today's scientific problems, such as interpreting the just-sequenced human genome, require knowledge and expertise in fields that have historically had little crossover.

Economics is one of the fields that blends the quantitative and the qualitative, math and hard-won experience. Someone such as Summers is in a position to continue and even extend the work that Rudenstine has done on interfaculty initiatives.

Dr. Joseph B. Martin, the dean of Harvard Medical School, says he was heartened by a meeting he had with Summers two weeks ago. During the meeting, which ended with a posh dinner at the Faculty Club, the pair discussed the needs of and the challenges facing the medical school.

"I came away reassured that research, in particular inter-disciplinary research, would be high on his agenda," says Martin.