Sciences Division

Physics Professor Melissa Franklin will replace fellow Professor Christopher W. Stubbs as the chair of the Harvard Physics Department next year, marking the first time in history that the position will be held by a woman.

Harvard Mathematics Professor Shing-Tung Yau, one of this year’s two winners of the Wolf Prize in Mathematics, announced on Monday that he intends use his portion of the award to create a fund at China’s Tsinghua University to support the study of mathematics, especially among low income students.

MIT Professor Paula T. Hammond was honored as Scientist of the Year at the Harvard Foundation’s Albert Einstein Science Conference last Friday.

Roughly a week after winning the battle over health care reform, the Obama administration is set to nominate a Harvard knight to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to Associated Press reports attributed to sources within the administration.

Though aspiring Harvard students may spend this week mired in uncertainty as they wait for admission decisions on April 1, one thing is almost certain: more admitted students than ever before will come to Harvard with the hope of pursuing engineering and applied science.

In the midst of last year’s financial crisis, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith assembled six “working groups” to establish top Faculty priorities.

When Harvard nanotechnology researcher Michael P. Stopa went to the polls in 2008, there was only one name on the ballot for the Third District of Massachusetts’s Congressional seat—incumbent Democrat Jim McGovern.

Five departmental collections in the Museum of Comparative Zoology are facing a yearlong move from their age-old home on Oxford St. into the basement of the Northwest Science Building, after a series of clouded administrative indecisiveness that prompted some confusion among the staff.

Around 50 members of the Harvard Mind/Brain/Behavior community gathered in the Harvard-Yenching Library yesterday afternoon to hear biological anthropology professor Richard W. Wrangham explain how the cultural invention of cooking food has contributed to human evolution.