“He was never quite the same on the other side of his leave of absence. He decided he was going to have to ration his energies,” Gomes observes.

Looking back, Rudenstine laughs, “I might have felt I was still 35 or even 45 or even 50, and I wasn’t any of those things.”

This year, he turned 66.

The students of today might consider the University’s leader a passing blur, but the Harvard of the future will owe much of its shape to the decisions—and the money—that he made.

Over the years, the English poetry scholar became a savvy businessman. But fundraising, his colleagues say, is a human process—one that requires intense persuasive and personal skills.

Rudenstine doesn’t ask for specific amounts of money. Rudenstine doesn’t beg. Rudenstine explains. Rudenstine muses. Rudenstine charms. And with the aid of Provost Harvey V. Fineberg ’67 and Stone—the other two thirds of the campaign’s core trio—he was damn near irresistible.