The Celebration of the Harvard Tercentenary Source: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 43, No. 5, Harvard Tercentenary Conference of Arts and Sciences (Nov., 1936), pp. 477-480 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/16127 . Accessed: 02/05/2014 01:36 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Scientific Monthly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.72.117 on Fri, 2 May 2014 01:36:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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The Celebration of the Harvard TercentenarySource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 43, No. 5, Harvard Tercentenary Conference of Arts andSciences (Nov., 1936), pp. 477-480Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/16127 .
Accessed: 02/05/2014 01:36
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to The Scientific Monthly.
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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE THE CELEBRATION OF THE HARVARD TERCENTENARY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of its foun- dation on September 16, 17 and 18. Prececling the ceremonies there was a Conference of Arts and Sciences, held from August 31 to September 12. At this conference some seventy papers and addresses were presented by leading scholars and seientific men from the United States arid from fourteen foreign countries. THE S CIENTIFI C MONTHLY
has the privilege of printing in the pres- ent issue a number of these addresses and thus is enabled to do its part toward demolnstrating the remarkable charaeter of the program commemorating an event unparalleled in the history of American education.
The three tercentenary days opened with a reception in Sanders Theater on the afternoon of September 16, when each of tlhe 551 delegates was greeted by President Conanit. Their reception was followed by an address by him to which a response on behalf of all the delegates was made in French by the senior dele- gate fronm the University of Paris, the mathematician Professor Rlie Cartan. After the reception tea was served in the delta or yard of Memorial Hall. In the evening the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave a concert under the direction of Dr. Sergei Koussevitsky. There were other syrnphony concerts on the two following days, at the latter of which there were choruses sung by the Tercentenary Chorus mnade up of present and former members of the Hlarvard Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral Society.
The meeting of the Associated Harvard Clubs was the feature of the morning of Alumni I)ay, September 17. Following a service of thanksgiving and remem- braniee in the Memorial Church, a meet- ing was held in the tercentenary theater set up in the Harvard yard with seats
for 15,000 people. After the roll of classes had been called President Conant reported on the contents of the package which was sealed in 1836 by Piesident Josiah Quincy. The package contained letters written by alumni in answer to the invitation to the two hundredth anni- versary celebration of the university. After quoting from those documents, President Conant sealed a similar pack- age to be opened by the president of the university in 2036.
There were speeches by three under- graduate students, the unveiling of a bust of the late Dean Briggs, the presen- tation of gifts from alumni in China and Japan and of a gift of $5,000 from men not graduates of Harvard. The faculties of the university gave a luncheon in Memorial Hall in honor of the visiting delegates. Informal speeches were de- livered by five delegates, representing universities of Europe, Asia and South America, and by one delegate who voiced the good-will of universities of the United States. These were Sir Frederick G. Hopkins, Professor Joseph Bedier, Pro- fessor Tullio Levi-Civita, Professor Hu Shih, Professor Bernardo Alberto Hous- say and President Lotus D. Coffman. The toastmaster was Dean Sperry. In the evening the Harvard Chapter of the fraternity of Phi Beta Kappa held exer- cises, at which the address was made by Professor Bronislaw Malinowski, of the University of London, and a poem was read by Professor Robert S. Hillyer, of Harvard University. Later in the eve- ning a reception was held at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston for delegates from other universities and learned societies. Also at 9 o'clock be- gan the illumination of the river front, arranged as a part of the Undergraduate Celebration.
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THE ROSTRUAI OF THE TERCENTENARY THEATER JOHN NIASEFIELD, THE ENGI.ISH POET LAUREATE, IS READING THE TERCENTENARY POEZI.
On the third day of the celebration the morning was oiven up to the formal ex- ercises of the university, and in the after- noon the Harvard Alumni Association lield its meeting. After processions of alumni and delegates the bells of South- wark Cathedral, London, wlhere John Harvard was baptized in 1607, were lheard as carried by radio across the At- lantic.
Dean W. L. Sperry, of the Divi\nity School, gave the invocation, and Pro- fessor E. K. Rand delivered a saltitatory oration in Latin. Then follow\ed an ad- dress on " The Foundingo of Harvard College" by Professor S. E. Morison; "Greetings from the Commonwealth" by Governor James M. Curley, of AMas- sachusetts; addresses by President Co- nant to the Universities of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge; " Lines Suggested by the Tercentenary, " a poem by John AMasefield, poet laureate of England;
President Conant 's oration, " The Uni- versity Tradition in America-Yester- day and To-morrow"; the conferring of sixty-two honorary degrees on those who took part in the Conference of Arts and Sciences, and the benediction by the Rt. Rev. W\Tilliam Lawrence. The Tercen- tenary Chorus, -under the direction of Professor Davison, sang selections at ap- propriate times.
Owing to the rain which began to fall during the exercises, arrangements were made for transferring the nmeeting of the Alumni Association from the open theater in the Yard to Sanders Theater with radio transmission to other audi- toriums.
President Emeritus Lowell, as "Presi- dent of the Day," presided at the meet- ing of the Alumni Association in the afternoon. He introduced first Presi- dent Conant, and then a brief message was received by radio from Stanley
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-Photogr aph fr om the Boston Tr aveler DR A LAWRENCE LOWELL
PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Baldwin, chancellor of Cambridge Uni- versity. The other speakers were: Judge Learned Hand, '93, president of the Harvard Alumni Association; Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States; James Rowland Angell, presi- dent of Yale University; Alexander
Dunlop Lindsay, master of Balliol Col- lege and vice-chancellor of Oxford Uni- versity, and George R. Agassiz, presi- dent of the Board of Overseers. At the end of the proceedings, President Conant moved that the meeting be adjourned to September 18, 2036.
THE HARVARD TERCENTENARY CONFERENCE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
SIXTY-SEVEN of the world's most dis- tinguished scholars and scientists, in- cluding eleven winners of the Nobel prize, gathered in Cambridge, Massa- chusetts, during the first two weeks of September to participate in the Har-vard Tercentenary Conference of Arts and Sciences. Outstanding thinkers in nu- merous fields of specialized endeavor, the participants came not merely to report
on progress within the limits of these fields but to approach a broader concep- tion of man's nature, his learning and his functions as interpreted from these widely divergent viewpoints. Astrono- mers, philosophers, economists, chem- ists, historians, biologists, psychologists, mathematicians, geologists, physicists and a host of other specialists presented their contributions in a novel attempt to
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