Warren House 7

The entrance to the Warren House is inviting, well-preserved, and well-lit.

Warren House 1

The Warren House is painted yellow and features twin white brick chimneys that jut resolutely into the crisp Cambridge air.

Warren House 4

Warren House 9

Annexed in the rear of the building is a stylistically unique rear porch. Constructed in 1897, this red brick portion of the house stands two stories tall and is adorned with glazed tile balustrades.

plate

An astronomical photographic plate taken in Peru from Harvard College Observatory's Arequipa Station.

Metereological Station, Arequipa, Peru]

The Metereological Station at Arequipa, Peru.

el misti

The Arequipa Station with El Misti in the background.

The Bruce Telescope in Arequipa, Peru

The Bruce Telescope in Arequipa, Peru.

Peruvians workers at site of construction of Bruce Building, Harvard College Observatory, Arequipa, Peru

Peruvians workers work on the Bruce Building at Harvard College Observatory, Arequipa, Peru.

Solon Bailey

Solon I. Bailey at a telescope.

Mount Harvard Cover

In the late 19th to early 20th century, the Harvard College Observatory set up a field station in Arequipa, Peru to document the skies of the Southern hemisphere.

Susan Sontag

But for Sontag, no word went unqualified, no word was left without its own definition to her, not “Camp,” not “illness,” not even “I,” and certainly not “writer.”

The Ghost of Susan Sontag

“The Self as a Project.” That’s what Sontag told Charlie Rose she was working on when she wasn’t writing. The grand irony is that she took that noble aspiration of the liberal arts colleges she swore off and made it hers: teaching people how to think.

Astronomical Imperialism: Harvard In the Peruvian Skies

The data collected by Harvard College Observatory in Arequipa in the late 19th to early 20th century, is foundational in the study of astronomy and has furthered our understanding of the cosmos. But this type of cross-continental scientific undertaking cannot be separated from its impact on its workers — both the Indigenous people building Harvard facilities in Peru and the low-paid women astronomers in Cambridge.

Walter Gilbert

Walter Gilbert ’53, who would share the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for DNA research involving DNA, remembers the debate over the safety of recombinant DNA research playing out “inside the University in several meetings” before spilling out into the public.