Shem the Penman
Excerpt from Harvard Magazine:
“The people who intermediate between lunatics and the world used to be called alienists; the go-betweens for mathematicians are called teachers. Many a student may rightly have wondered if the terms shouldn’t be reversed.”
— Review of The Magic of Numbers, a book by Benedict H. Gross, Leverett Professor of Mathematics and Dean of Harvard College
For the full review, see
On Mathematical Imagination–
Harvard Magazine
(January-February 2004):
… part of a New Instauration
that will bring mathematics, at last, …
Wednesday, December 31, 2003,
7:00pm EST • 26.1k •
http://www.harvardmagazine.com/
on-line/010442.html
From today’s Harvard Crimson:
Leverett resident in
critical condition, ‘improving’
Published On Friday,
October 27, 2006 4:35 AM
Crimson Staff Writer
An undergraduate fell from a ninth-floor window in Leverett House Tower F yesterday morning, suffering serious injuries, according to University officials.
The 25-year-old student, Steven R. Snyder ’04-’08, was in critical condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center as of yesterday….
Rooms in the Leverett Towers typically have one large window that doesn’t open and at least one smaller window that can be cranked open. The smaller windows are each about two feet wide and four feet high….
Snyder– who is from Avon Lake, Ohio– is a mathematics concentrator….
Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, in an e-mail sent to undergraduates at about 12:30 p.m. yesterday, said a student “apparently fell from a window,” and an “investigation is underway.”
“A time like this can be very difficult for everyone, especially those who live in Leverett. I would like to remind all students and staff that there are many people on campus who can help you through this difficult time,” Gross added. He directed students to the University’s Mental Health Services and the Bureau of Study Counsel. |
Related material:
The Crimson Passion,
the previous entry,
Hall of Shem,
and the link, in the
Ash Wednesday, 2006,
entry, Deaconess,
to The House of God,
a novel by
Samuel Shem.
Shem is the pen-name
of Stephen J. Bergman,
Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry
at Harvard Medical School.