Martha Minow, the Jeremiah Smith, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, will become the dean of the Faculty of Law on July 1, President Drew Faust announced today (June 11).

A member of the Law School faculty since 1981, Minow is a distinguished legal scholar with interests that range from international human rights to equality and inequality, from religion and pluralism to managing mass tort litigation, from family law and education law to the privatization of military, schooling, and other governmental activities. She is also a widely admired teacher who chaired the Law School’s curricular reform efforts of recent years and was recognized with the School’s Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence in 2005.

“Martha Minow has been an intellectual leader, a devoted teacher and mentor, a collaborative colleague, and an exemplary institutional citizen across her nearly three decades of service on the Harvard Law School faculty,” said Faust in announcing the appointment. “She’s a scholar of remarkable intelligence, imagination, and scope, with a passion for legal education and a deep sense of how the law can serve essential public purposes. She has played an important and influential role in the institutional life of the Law School and the University over the years, and I am delighted that she has agreed to serve as dean during a critical time in the long and storied history of the School.”

“I am deeply honored and humbled by the opportunity to serve as the next dean of Harvard Law School,” said Minow. “I am grateful to Drew Faust for inviting me to assume this vital role, and I will do my best to enhance and build upon the extraordinary leadership of past deans Elena Kagan and Robert Clark, and the wise and thoughtful stewardship of Acting Dean Howell Jackson. In this time of both challenge and promise for this country and for the world, Harvard Law School faculty, students, staff, and graduates are already playing pivotal roles in the search for financial stability, national security, peaceful international relations, and legal order. I am eager to help the remarkable community of people at the Harvard Law School, in concert with colleagues across Harvard and beyond, continue to pursue the promise of the rule of law, the ideal of justice, the practical solution of problems, and ever deeper understandings of legal institutions and commitments.”

Minow’s appointment comes in light of the March confirmation of Elena Kagan, the Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law, to serve as solicitor general of the United States after nearly six years in the deanship. Howell Jackson, the James S. Reid, Jr., Professor of Law, has served as the School’s acting dean in recent months.

“Howell Jackson has done an extraordinary job these past few months guiding the School with great professionalism and dedication,” said Faust. “I am very grateful to him for having been willing to lead the School on an interim basis through a challenging transitional time. And, once again, I want to recognize and thank Elena Kagan for a deanship that had a transformative positive impact on Harvard Law School.”

In addition to many articles in legal and other journals, Minow’s publications include the books “Partners, Not Rivals: Privatization and the Public Good” (2002), “Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory, Law, and Repair” (2002), “Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence” (1998), “Not Only for Myself: Identity, Politics, and the Law” (1997), and “Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law” (1990). She is co-editor of casebooks on civil procedure, women and the law, and family law, as well as volumes including “Government by Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy” (2009, with Jody Freeman), “Just Schools: Pursuing Equality in Societies of Difference” (2008, with Richard Shweder and Hazel Rose Markus), “Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies” (2002, with Shweder and Markus), and “Law Stories: Law, Meaning, and Violence” (1996, with Gary Bellow).

Minow co-chaired the Law School’s curricular reform committee from 2003 to 2006, an effort that led to significant innovation in the first-year curriculum as well as new programs of study for second- and third-year J.D. students. She has taught courses on a wide range of subjects including civil procedure, constitutional law (with a focus on the First Amendment, the structure of government, and the 14th Amendment), nonprofit organizations, family law, law and education, jurisprudence, and the legal profession. She is a senior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows as well as a past member of the Harvard University Press Board of Syndics. She twice served as acting director of what is now Harvard’s Safra Foundation Center for Ethics (1993-94 and 2000-01), where she remains a member of the governing faculty committee, and she co-chaired Harvard’s Project on Justice, Welfare, and Economics (2001-03), where she also continues to serve on the faculty committee.

A member of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, she played a leading role in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ “Imagine Coexistence” project, aimed at promoting peaceful coexistence after violent ethnic conflict. In addition, she has co-directed a multidisciplinary study of U.S. responses to recent immigrants, as well as a federally sponsored center supporting access to the general curriculum for public school children with disabilities. She chairs the board of the Charles H. Revson Foundation, and has also served on the boards of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the Covenant Foundation, Facing History and Ourselves, and the Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center.

After completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, Minow received a master’s degree in education from Harvard and her law degree from Yale. She clerked for Judge David Bazelon of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court of the United States. She joined the Harvard Law faculty as an assistant professor in 1981, was promoted to professor in 1986, was named the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Law in 2003, and became the Jeremiah Smith Jr., Professor of Law in 2005. She is also a lecturer in the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Minow’s appointment marks the culmination of a broad-ranging search that began in early January, after President Barack Obama nominated Elena Kagan as U.S. solicitor general. “The search gave me the opportunity to meet with many of the Law School’s faculty, as well as with key groups of students, staff, alumni, and others,” said Faust. “I learned a great deal about the state of the School and its future opportunities and challenges, and I’m very grateful to everyone who took the time to offer constructive advice along the way. I’m especially thankful to the dozen faculty colleagues who served on my advisory group for the search, for their candor, their collegiality, and their good counsel in helping arrive at an excellent outcome.”

“True professions have codes of conduct,” wrote Harvard Business School (HBS) professors Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana in a 2008 Harvard Business Review article. At the end of Class Day exercises (June 3), approximately half of the 886 graduating HBS students took the professors’ comments seriously enough to sign a managerial version of the Hippocratic oath, pledging to manage the companies they work for in a way that safeguards not just the interests of stakeholders, but of fellow employees, customers, and the larger society in which they function.

Max Anderson, a George Leadership Fellow who has just completed his final year in a joint-degree program at HBS and Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), spearheaded the effort to craft and build support for the “MBA Oath.” When a colleague responded enthusiastically, Anderson began to research similar oaths already in use at other business schools such as Columbia and Thunderbird. He and 32 other graduating joint-degree and M.B.A. students worked together to create a pledge that “takes the best from these other oaths and adds our own flavor,” Anderson said.

“Once the project was up and running, I spoke about it at the end-of-year dinner for the George Fellows,” Anderson continued. “Seventeen of this year’s George Fellows eventually signed on, and many of them played key roles in promoting support for the oath. Without question, our involvement in the joint-degree program with HKS and the George Fellowship gave this idea real momentum. I think we saw it as a natural extension of the cocurricular conversations we’ve had this year.”

The George Leadership Fellows program, established through a foundation started by HBS professor and former chairman of Medtronic Bill George and his wife, Penny, annually selects 20 joint M.B.A.-M.P.P. students in the final year of their degree work. The George Fellows’ monthly program, designed by the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, includes discussions with senior executives from the public and private sectors about ethical leadership and multisector careers.

Among the specific promises included in the HBS oath are the pledges to represent the performance and risks of the business accurately and honestly and to hold oneself and one’s colleagues mutually accountable for living by the oath. Interestingly, noted Brian Elliot, another George Fellow who has accepted a job at the social enterprise Endeavor, the oath makes no mention of any particular sector whatsoever. “Rather, people who take the oath are committing themselves to make ethical decisions in whichever sector they find themselves.”

“M.B.A.s definitely need to rebrand themselves,” said Anderson, citing recent polls documenting how far the public’s trust in business managers has fallen. “But the oath is about more than changing perceptions. It’s about changing behavior and changing the business culture from ‘looking out for No. 1’ to recognizing that we’re all in this together.”

Maura Sullivan, another George Fellow who was instrumental in garnering support for the oath — more than 750 M.B.A.s from Harvard and elsewhere have signed it — will begin working in PepsiCo’s leadership development program this fall. “Pepsi is an $80 billion company that affects the lives of numerous people and communities. Why shouldn’t that responsibility be taken as seriously as the Hippocratic oath a doctor takes? Figuring out how far that responsibility goes or what specifically it entails is rarely a black-and-white issue. But business leaders need to let the public know that they’re committed to managing those tensions to the best of their ability.

“It’s not legally binding, but the symbolism of the oath is important,” added Sullivan, a captain in the Marine Corps. “In the military, every time you’re promoted, you take a new oath — in front of other people who will help hold you accountable.”

Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, turns 80 years old next year.

But even in her lifetime, she told a Harvard audience last week (June 5), there has been a “revolution” regarding the issue of women as practitioners of American law.

O’Connor — chipper, funny, and precise — spoke at a luncheon sponsored annually by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, which awarded the former justice its Radcliffe Medal.

She joined a stellar cast of previous honorees: Donna Shalala last year, Toni Morrison the year before, and, in years past, the likes of Madeleine K. Albright, Lena Horne, Katharine Graham, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Dole, and Janet Reno.

Radcliffe Dean Barbara J. Grosz praised O’Connor’s American West virtues, “honesty, discipline, and good humor.” She also said the veteran jurist is the first Radcliffe Medalist to be a member of the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.

Grosz also noted, with admiration, O’Connor’s “non-retirement” since 2006 — busy promoting three issues: judicial independence (hard to create, easy to destroy); early public education in civics (O’Connor is behind the new Internet education site www.ourcourts.org); and the relevance of international law in American jurisprudence.

O’Connor — silver-haired and slim in a violet jacket and black slacks — delivered a brief history of women in American law.

She started with present statistics: Women comprise 50 percent of law students and 45 percent of law firm associates. But only 20 percent of judges are women, along with 16 percent of law firm equity partners, and –— this got a laugh — 11 percent of Supreme Court justices.

To date, women have achieved parity in the legal profession, but only at entry-level positions, said O’Connor. The more power a job has, the fewer women are likely to be in it.

Still, “it’s been an amazing century for us,” she said. “It was not that long ago that the only relevant statistic regarding women in the legal profession was zero percent — as in zero associates, zero equity partners, and zero judges.”

As for not long ago: O’Connor told her own story. Fresh out of Stanford Law School in 1952, and ranked near the top of her class, she had trouble landing an interview with a law firm — much less a job.

When she did get an interview, her interviewer asked, “Now, Miss Day, how well can you type?”

Impediments like this led her to a career in public service, perhaps happily — because of the experience, said O’Connor. (She went on, in Arizona, to serve in all three branches of state government.)

Her first job, in 1952, was as a county attorney — for no money and with a desk next to the secretary.

Decades before, “early women legal pioneers faced a cult of domesticity,” said O’Connor — the notion that women were unsuited to the hurly-burly of the law.

“They were compassionate, whereas lawyers had to be ruthless,” she said. “They were gentle, where lawyers had to be forceful. Women were pure, when lawyers had to be morally flexible.” (Laugh line.)

“The view that women could not cut it as lawyers enjoyed an embarrassingly long shelf life in our United States,” said O’Connor.

She related the case of Myra Bradwell, who in 1869 applied to be admitted to the Illinois bar. Turned down, she appealed all the way to the Supreme Court — and lost there, too, in 1873.

O’Connor recalled that Greta Coleman ’15 and Elizabeth Beale ’15, two Radcliffe suffragists, lobbied in 1914 for the college to add legal studies. By the next year, there was a Cambridge Law School for Women, a national first. It only lasted two years, said O’Connor, but was an inspiration.

By 1920, women had gained the right to vote. And by 1922, the nation saw its first female state Supreme Court justice, in Ohio: Florence E. Allen. (Her advice to a friend: “Never forget, nor remember, that you are a woman.”)

In 1934, Allen became the first female federal judge. She wrote “good opinions,” said O’Connor, “rather than women’s opinions.”

Allen was later turned down by both Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman for U.S. Supreme Court consideration — for reasons, O’Connor said, that signaled the enduring power of “the cult of domesticity.”

But starting with Reed v. Reed in 1971, an equal protection case that reached the Supreme Court, gender barriers started falling fast.

Losing its shine, said O’Connor, was “the myth of the true woman” — or what Justice William J. Brennan Jr. in 1972 called “romantic paternalism.” Such concepts, he said — as O’Connor quoted, put women “not on a pedestal, but in a cage.”

But just as the courts and Congress were turning away from gender-based classifications, the same kind of myths were getting revisited, said O’Connor — writers questioning “whether women are different merely by virtue of being women.”

In the legal arena, such inquiry suggests that women lawyers (including O’Connor herself, according to one writer) would rather mediate than litigate, for instance.

“I fear that kind of calls back the old mess we struggled to put behind us,” and revives old stereotypes, said O’Connor.

“This new feminism is certainly interesting,” she said. “But it troubles me because it so nearly echoes the Victorian myth of the ‘true woman’ that kept women out of the action for so long.”

On June 4, administrators sighed with relief at the weather, speakers went over their notes, and graduates congregated in black-tasseled flocks alongside a rainbow of professors in their own caps and gowns. Meanwhile, the Harvard Gazette staff fanned out across the campus on Commencement day to pick a rainbow of their own — colorful accounts of the long, happy day. Read about the oldest graduates — and the youngest. Watch Divinity School angels take off, and see Medical School grads wearing surgical masks. Hear the bells peal and maestro Wynton Marsalis play “America the Beautiful.”

Sine qua non

Shortly before Morning Exercises (June 4), a young man in cap and gown squeezed into a Holyoke Center elevator. “Where’s the Financial Aid Office?” he asked. “You don’t need financial aid anymore,” a man joked. “You’re graduating.”

“Not if I don’t pay my bill,” the young man replied.

“That’s what we’re doing, too,” the older man said. “Our daughter didn’t pay a fee.”

The graduate, the man, and his wife exited on the ninth floor to complete the most ancient and solemn ritual of all.

Men in skirts

Members of the Stuart Highlanders, a pipe band from Wilmington, Mass., took a coffee break at the outdoor tables at Au Bon Pain dressed in white shirts, black vests, and tartan kilts before hitting the pavement for their second round of piping that Commencement afternoon. They were recharging from their early start, having woken residents of Cabot and Lowell houses with their bagpipes at 6:15 a.m. and then having marched them into the Yard to line up for Morning Exercises. In his 17 years on the job, Bob Cameron said the only major mishap he could recall was seeing a piper spill a cup of hot coffee on his kilt-exposed legs.

Bittersweet farewell

A few minutes before 7 a.m. on Commencement day, as graduating seniors from Leverett House marched up Plympton Street to the sounds of a jubilant tuba, a dozen people stood outside the House, beaming with pride as they watched the procession. They called out congratulations to the passing graduates. They snapped photographs. At least one cried.

But these weren’t the graduates’ proud parents or grandparents. Their tidy aprons and starched white uniforms identified them as staffers in the Leverett House dining center.

Everything’s coming up roses

… and daffodils … and daisies

Flowers could be seen everywhere on Commencement day, from the blooming bushes in the Yard to the bouquet-laden gift carts scattered throughout Harvard Square. Even the mail room at Lowell House was filled with arrangements — special deliveries adding cheer to an already festive day for the Class of 2009.

‘Hey! This guy’s good.’

As a soloist stood on the steps next to the Memorial Church and performed a rendition of “America the Beautiful” to open the morning Commencement Exercises, the crowd was noticeably impressed. “He’s good!” a member of the audience exclaimed in surprise, stirred by the trumpeter’s musicianship and ease before such a large gathering. He was good, and relaxed, and with good reason. The lone trumpeter was none other than jazz great Wynton Marsalis, who, it just so happens, was also receiving an honorary degree during the service.

‘A lot of practicing’

Raymond Fadel ’12, a trumpet player in the Harvard Marching Band, spoke about his experience joining the rest of the band members in a tribute to Wynton Marsalis: “It was fantastic and a great experience. [At] Commencement rehearsal, our director gave us a piece that was arranged by our student conductor as a fitting salute to his honorary degree.”

And although he would love to do a trumpet duet with Marsalis, Fadel admitted, “I would do a lot of practicing before considering.”

Forget Paris

One Commencement guest, a physics research intern from Paris, excused himself from his work on Thursday to catch part of the ceremony. “I wanted to attend this ceremony to get an idea about how [Americans] celebrate graduation. We don’t have this in [France], so this is interesting,” he said. “I’m going to take the afternoon off to enjoy the ceremonies and to discover new things about the American culture.”

Wunderkinder

On graduation day, Loker Commons was temporarily turned into a day care center as the young children of Ph.D. students prepared to graduate along with their parents — literally. One proud wife and mother explained, “My daughter will be getting her honorary Ph.D. today, at 13 months old. And she’s having fun, but I’m a little upset because my father has a Ph.D. and I didn’t get an honorary degree!”

Footwear

If footwear has any cultural meaning, this year’s Harvard College graduates are taking a turn to the “Mild Side.” For men, the most common style was plain black leather dress shoes. They were even tied! For women, what prevailed below the ankles were plain flats and open-toed black heels, in even numbers. Within this conservative crowd, the odd-shod stood out. One observer spotted a few contrarian pairs of running shoes and flip-flops, along with one pair each of leopard slippers, pale blue Chuck Taylor high-tops, moon shoes, and — so 20th century! — tasseled loafers.

Appropriate accessory

As a marshal for the Divinity School, Elizabeth Leavitt sported a pair of white, feathered wings and a gold halo made out of pipe cleaner, for her class’s Morning Exercises.

Props? Or proper precaution?

Every Commencement, graduates of Harvard’s various Schools bring in props to wave as Harvard’s president confers their degrees: plastic globes for Harvard Kennedy School students or school workbooks for those from the Graduate School of Education, for example. This year, graduating students from Harvard Medical School sported surgical masks, making them look like … well, pandemic-shy residents of major cities around the world. With thousands of people crammed into Harvard Yard for Thursday’s ceremonies and swine flu out and about, it was unclear whether the newly minted docs were toting masks in the spirit of the day or out of an abundance of caution. Both perhaps?

All tuckered out

By 9:50 a.m., just as Morning Exercises were getting under way, two weary spectators had already decided it was nap time. They stretched out on the ledge of Widener Library across from Boylston Hall and snored peacefully through the booming, joyous introductions of University Marshal Jackie O’Neill. In place of a pillow, one of the sleepers had balanced a Frisbee over his eyes — hardly comfortable, but apparently adequate.

Room with a view

One clever family avoided the morning crowds by escaping to the second floor of Weld Hall, where they commandeered a corner bedroom suite overlooking Tercentenary Theatre. The view was perfect, offering clear sightlines to the procession, a good perspective on one of the enormous video screens, and just enough height to glimpse the stage beyond. Mom stood by the open window, camera trained on the crowd, while Dad relaxed on the extra-long twin mattress and leafed through a copy of the program.

The only problem with their otherwise ideal campout was that the room is a hospitality room, technically reserved for guests of the Extension School. This family was there to celebrate their daughter’s graduation from the College.

“I think we’re going to have to ask them to leave,” whispered one of the room attendants, an Extension alumna. Her tone was apologetic.

“But not until the ceremony’s over.”

Hometown girl makes good

The Harvard Gazette — by no means for the first time — was proud to be represented at Commencement by a newly minted A.L.M. This year it was photographer Stephanie Mitchell. Not only did she graduate in her concentration of studio arts, but Mitchell’s thesis, “The Ancient and Modern Art of Abbas Kiarostami,” was awarded the prestigious Annamae and Allan R. Crite Prize for “singular dedication to learning and the arts.” Mitchell’s proud fellow photographers (from the Gazette and elsewhere) swarmed around their friend like a hive of excited paparazzi, causing some bystanders to wonder aloud, “Is she a celebrity?!”

Hopelessly devoted

The parents of Lowell House senior Max Mishkin were thrilled to see their son, a tuba player and outgoing drillmaster with the Harvard Band, finally graduate. Jeremy and Barbara Mishkin drove up from Philadelphia to attend Thursday’s Commencement ceremonies, retracing a route they’d driven many times in the past four years.

The pair said they’d taken advantage of every opportunity to visit Harvard and watch Max play. Among other excursions, Barbara said she’d been to three Harvard-Yale games and watched past Commencements, at which the band played, on their Webcasts.

“We’re incredibly proud,” Barbara said. “To actually be here, it feels incredible; it’s a magical experience.”

Bamboo poles and natural talent

For those in the audience, the awarding of honorary degrees is at least as interesting for the tidbits they reveal about the lives of extraordinary individuals as they are for the honors they convey.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, as a child pole-vaulted with store-bought bamboo poles, clearing 8 feet for his trouble. Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who brought his trumpet along for renditions of “America the Beautiful” and “When the Saints Go Marching In,” apparently never practiced as a child for fear the line around his lips made by the mouthpiece would scare off the girls.

And Anthony Fauci put in extraordinarily long hours as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Harvard Provost Steven E. Hyman, who was introducing the honoraries, knows Fauci from Hyman’s service as director of the National Institute of Mental Health from 1996 to 2001. Fauci’s car, Hyman said, was always the first in the lot in the morning and the last there at night.

“We debated whether it had a battery,” Hyman deadpanned.

The ringmaster

The majestic peals of the Lowell House bells filled Harvard Square not once, not twice, but three times on Commencement day. Who was behind all the ring-a-ding? Ben Rapoport ’03, Lowell House tutor and M.D./Ph.D. candidate at the Harvard Medical School.

Rapoport has been a klappermeister, or bellringer, since 2000. He learned to ring the bells during his sophomore year and has continued throughout his tenure at Harvard. Thursday marked Rapoport’s seventh Commencement performance. By tradition, the bells are rung three times on Commencement day: when the Lowell seniors process out of the House courtyard, when they return, and when the final degree is conferred. From his perch in the tower, Rapoport can keep watch on the proceedings in the courtyard and time his peals perfectly.

Russian bells are not typically designed to accommodate Western tonalities, so it can be difficult to play tunes that make sense to local ears. The new Lowell House bells, installed last July after the original set was returned to the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, were cast to offer a compromise between Western and Russian tastes. If he chooses, therefore, Rapoport can play a recognizable tune. For Commencement day his go-to choice is the 1836 College hymn, “Fair Harvard.”

“Sometimes alumni bell ringers come back, and join me up in the tower,” Rapoport said. “It’s always wonderful to see them.”

Venerable

In the fall of 1927, George Barner arrived at Harvard after two years at Grinnell College in his native Iowa. This year, the Class of 1929 graduate was back on campus for Commencement day, the oldest alumnus to take part in the ceremonies.

Barner, wearing a natty golf cap, ate lunch in the shade of a tent behind Stoughton Hall. Across the table from him, in a wide white hat and big sunglasses, was Frances Addelson ’30, the oldest Radcliffe graduate to attend.

Both are 100 years old. Barner, who retired from his law practice in 1969, lives in Kennebunk, Maine. He may give up driving his Lincoln this year. Addelson, a one-time social worker living in Brookline, Mass., founded a troupe of senior Shakespeare players at age 92. She reached the century mark in May.

At any Commencement, the oldest graduates gather in that same far shady corner of the Yard. It’s a Harvard time machine.

Addelson takes a listener back to Cambridge of the 1920s, when Radcliffe students were barred from Harvard Yard and from wearing bobby socks in Harvard Square. When Radcliffe girls went to Widener Library, she said, they studied in one cell-like room. The books were delivered.

Barner’s senior year was marked by debate over a proposed “house” system for undergraduates, who feared it would dash tradition and impose new authority. He studied French literature with Louis Allard, a scholar with 19th century roots. And Barner remembered the now-forgotten Pi Eta, a fellowship club whose homegrown stage productions — complete with undergraduates in drag — rivaled Hasty Pudding.

Both centenarians, who later marched at the head of the Alumni Parade through Harvard Yard, were a little taken back at the attention.

“I’m very much surprised. I lived a very modest life as a social worker,” said Addelson. “When I began my 100th year, all of a sudden everybody looked at me as a celebrity.”

Barner, who turns 101 in December, took the passing of years equally in stride. “It doesn’t impress me,” he said. “I don’t feel like I’m that age.”

Addelson and Barner sat in the first row for the Afternoon Exercises. Early on, the assembled crowd heard some sad news: Albert H. Gordon ’23, M.B.A. ’25, LL.D. ’77, died May 1 at age 107. Until then, he had been the oldest living graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Business School.

No small picnic

Between Morning and Afternoon Exercises, Harvard put on what may have been the world’s largest picnic, feeding countless graduates, families, and alumni in venues across the University. At the head of the catering craziness was Ted A. Mayer, executive director for Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS). Armed with clipboards, spreadsheets, and cell phones, Mayer and his team successfully served more than 30,000 meals.

“The biggest challenge is coordination,” said Mayer. “Our whole department basically turns into a catering group.”

Planning for Commencement meals began nearly three months ago. Martin Breslin, director for culinary operations at HUDS, worked with alumni groups and House masters to design the perfect menu for each lunch.

“We have approximately 35 different menus today,” said Breslin, brandishing an intricate spreadsheet.

According to Mayer, this year’s menus are more modest, in keeping with the economic downturn.

“People have been more conservative with their menu approach,” Mayer said. “We have a lot more chicken, for example. It’s still a celebration, but groups are being more careful with their finances and holding less extravagant events. It mirrors the reality of what’s happened [in the economy].”

Though the menus vary, one constant at every location — whether a House courtyard or an alumni tent — is the famed Harvard “H” ice cream. The frozen treat consists of vanilla ice cream emblazoned with a crimson “H” in the center, surrounded by a ring of crimson sprinkles.

“The ice cream has been served for maybe 40 or 50 years,” Breslin said. “It’s a well-established tradition. … A lot of alums come back and look for it on Commencement day.”

Chalk it up to clever advertising

The chalked sign in front of Mr. Bartley’s Gourmet Burgers, a Harvard Square institution that has been dishing up patties since 1960, drew customers to the sidewalk and gave hungry parents a laugh:

“Harvard Degree: $200K. Picture of Graduate with Mr. B: Priceless.”

Fifty years later

Standing near a flag in the Old Yard to mark the group of graduates from the Class of 1959, Michael Whiteman of Albany, N.Y., and formerly of Dunster House, reminisced about his days as a Harvard undergraduate. The diversity of today’s graduating class was a welcome change for the alumnus who described his own class from half a century ago as largely male and white. “It seems to me,” he added, “the students look much happier.” One of Whiteman’s enduring Harvard memories was thanks to his roommate. “He was behind in his organic chemistry lab, so he tried to catch up doing some experiments in our room,” he recalled. Unfortunately, his roommate’s attempt to heat toluene, a component of TNT, on a hot plate resulted in a small fire. “It singed all the paint off the walls,” Whiteman recalled.

Titter

The best unanimous titter went to the Chaplain for the Day who, during his opening prayer, wondered if the spirit of truth was “the one who has sustained these proud parents gathered here today in love and relief ...” The second half of his comment sent a ripple of laughter through the thousands of parents gathered in Tercentenary Theatre, and, unsurprisingly, the thousands of their graduating children also in attendance.

‘Meaningful moments’

As graduates of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) filed out of Longfellow Hall into a large white tent to receive their diplomas, members of the crowd fanned themselves with their programs and took refuge under large white and crimson umbrellas, as the sun, an infrequent guest at recent Commencements, beamed down on the gathering and temperatures rose.

“As educators, we know about giving our all to a difficult task,” said HGSE Dean Kathleen McCartney to the graduating class. “And we know that the meaningful moments matter. … Members of the Class of 2009, I am here today to make an easy prediction: As educators, you will touch the future, and your future will be filled with many, many meaningful moments.”

Corydon Ireland, Colleen Walsh, Alvin Powell, Emily T. Simon, Gervis A. Menzies Jr., Steve Bradt, and John Lenger contributed to this story.

Photeine Anagnostopoulos (New York, N.Y.), chief operating officer of the New York City public schools. She received her A.B. from Harvard College in 1981 and her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1985.

Joshua Boger (Concord, Mass.), founder and former chief executive officer of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a global biotechnology company based in Cambridge. He received his bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University, then his A.M. (1975) and a Ph.D. (1979) from Harvard.

Morgan Chu (Los Angeles), intellectual property expert with the law firm Irell & Manella. A 1976 graduate of Harvard Law School, Chu also holds degrees from University of California, Los Angeles (A.B., A.M., Ph.D.) and Yale (M.S.L.).

Walter Clair (Nashville, Tenn.), clinical director of cardiac electrophysiology at the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute and faculty member at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. A 1977 graduate of Harvard College, he also holds an M.D. (1981) and an M.P.H. (1985) from Harvard.

Linda Greenhouse (New Haven, Conn.), former Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times, now Knight Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence and Joseph M. Goldstein Senior Fellow in Law at Yale Law School. Greenhouse graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968 and also holds an M.S.L. from Yale.

Cristián Samper (Washington, D.C.), director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. He received his bachelor of science degree from the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, then did his graduate work (A.M. 1989, Ph.D. 1992) at Harvard.

Five new Overseers were elected for six-year terms. The sixth-place finisher, Joshua Boger, will complete the three years remaining in the unexpired term of Arne Duncan, who stepped down from the Board of Overseers in light of his appointment as U.S. Secretary of Education.

In 2009, there were 10 candidates, eight nominated by a committee of the Harvard Alumni Association, as prescribed by the election rules, and two nominated by certificates from Harvard degree-holders. Degree holders cast 30,383 ballots in the election.

The primary function of the Board of Overseers is to encourage the University to maintain the highest attainable standards as a place of learning. Drawing on the diverse experience and expertise of its members, the Board exerts broad influence over the University’s strategic directions, provides essential counsel to the University’s leadership on priorities and plans, has the power of consent to certain actions such as the election of Corporation members, and directs the visitation process by which a broad array of Harvard Schools and departments are periodically reviewed.

Spaepen, the John C. and Helen F. Franklin Professor in Applied Physics, will return to direct Harvard’s Rowland Institute after helping to guide CNS through changes suggested in a recent report by an external review committee, launching CNS toward its next stage of development. In his role at CNS, Spaepen will work closely with both Jeremy Bloxham, dean of science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and Cherry A. Murray, incoming dean of SEAS.

CNS, which for the past five years has been led by Charles Marcus, professor of physics and scientific director of the Center for Imaging and Mesoscale Structures, operates and maintains centralized scientific facilities for use by researchers at Harvard and beyond. CNS also provides training and assistance for the next generation of scientists. Development of new, advanced facilities for the imaging and fabrication of nanoscale structures is also a high priority for CNS.

For someone who deep-sixed his BlackBerry (instant e-mail was taking over his life) and traded the local newspaper for a good book (“What do I need to know about Celtics’ scores?”), John Briscoe ’76 is as worldly a person as you are ever likely to meet.

An expert on water and economic development who most recently served as the World Bank’s senior water adviser and the country director for Brazil, Briscoe has lived in his native South Africa as well as Bangladesh, Mozambique, India, and Brazil.

Briscoe’s cultural comfort has been his guide amid what he calls the “changing economic geography” of the world. However painful and disorienting the current financial crisis, he insists that the true mover and shaker of the planet has never been the markets. It is instead the ebb and flow of the oceans.

“Water touches everything,” Briscoe explains. “It is about religion, culture, history, biology, government. It is everything.”

To make that point, the August 2008 Scientific American cover featured an image of the world as a sponge being wrung dry. The article’s author, Peter Rogers, Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), concluded that if unchecked, “by midcentury as much as three-quarters of the Earth’s population could face scarcities of freshwater.”

Rich or poor, powerful or weak, water’s fate is our fate.

From ‘the Bank’ to ‘the Big H’

Briscoe arrived in January as the Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Environmental Engineering, a joint appointment between SEAS and the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Having loved his roles as the “water guy” and the “Brazil guy” at “the Bank,” he did not make the change lightly.

His decision to come to Cambridge was influenced by the tug of ties both old and new. Two former deans, Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti (of SEAS) and Barry Bloom (of HSPH), urged him to create a water program for the 21st century, highlighting how Harvard was embracing integrative, global-minded science and engineering.

Only half a term in, he has discovered the promised openness and enthusiasm of the research community. Colleagues have filled up his schedule, asking Briscoe to give talks on behalf of the South Asia and Middle East Initiatives, present a lecture during Latin American Week, and meet with a group of visiting Chinese executives.

“Harvard is one of the few places where you can do this — and I feel like an absolute fish in water,” Briscoe says. Moreover, he has not had to give up his international connections. “The big ‘H’ counts for a lot. Everyone wants to partner with Harvard.”

At the same time, Briscoe was pulled in by past history, remembering fondly the achievements of his faculty advisers. From the late 1950s to the early ’60s, Harold A. Thomas Jr. (1913-2002) guided what became the famed Harvard Water Program. In tandem, Roger Revelle (1909-91), the man who inspired Al Gore about an inconvenient truth, focused on the link between population and natural resources as he created the Center for Population Studies at Harvard.

Both thinkers answered a call by John F. Kennedy, who was intent on offering a nonmilitary incentive to then-Pakistani President Muhammad Ayub Khan. As Pakistan was facing an agricultural crisis due to waterlogging (saturation) and salinization, Kennedy offered academic expertise. Thomas and Revelle’s diagnosis — more, not less, irrigation by supplementing canal water with the extensive use of groundwater — changed the history of the country and the region.

“By doing good science, [offering] good policy, and engaging politicians, they left a mark that is still revered by Pakistanis today,” says Briscoe.

Likewise, his goal is to craft a program that brings together politicians with policies and science. “The science part standing alone, is interesting, important, and obviously necessary, but not sufficient,” he says. “At the same time, even the best technocratic policies can be a bit blue-eyed and pie in the sky. Proposals will only work when they make political sense, too.”

Already, with no influence from Washington, 10 of the governors of Brazil’s 27 states — Briscoe knows them all — have said they are ready to work with Harvard on issues like sustainable development in the Amazon. On campus, students have pitched thesis topics, and policymakers have offered collaborations.

To best direct such enthusiasm, Briscoe advises those interested in the water development business to first overcome a common “moral hazard.” As many have never lived without water, “they come up with a whole set of prescriptions about an imagined solution that has nothing to do with people’s actual situation,” he says.

Put another way, water is deeply personal. “If you want to understand it in your heart, live in Mozambique or India or turn the taps or electricity off for a week.”

At Harvard, Briscoe’s vision is to create an environment where students, faculty, and politicians can come “in and out of the fray” and gain “a sense of what the battles are really about and find enough distance to see the science and what’s essential in it.”

He pictures a series of “horizontal partnerships” in which faculty and students pair with their peers in Brazil (to start) and then those within Australia and Pakistan. “The old model of ‘send your best and brightest to Harvard’ must,” says Briscoe, “be replaced by new types of partnerships that reflect the changed global economic geography.”

Part of his plan includes training a new generation of “integrators” — the kind of individuals a future world leader might call in a crunch. With a Harvard degree, he says, “you are equipped to be adventurous, and that’s a fantastic gift” — and essential, he has found, for tackling a moving target like the water problem.

Briscoe offers a sense of optimism rather than dire Malthusian predictions about a coming drought. That “water has no respite” inspires him. Even the pessimistic poet Philip Larkin saw beauty in the Earth’s most elusive element: “And I should raise in the east/A glass of water/Where any-angled light/Would congregate endlessly.”

As of June 4, Harvard has celebrated 358 commencements. Add to that the simultaneous celebration of untold thousands of reunions.

But it took until this year for a Harvard Class to host the first reunion that included the environment on its guest list.

Starting last fall, planners for the Class of 1984’s 25th reunion set out to reduce the big carbon footprint that comes with big reunions.

With good reason. At Harvard, the 25th is typically the mother of all reunions — a four-day blowout that opens Harvard Yard dormitories to families, caters large-scale meals, and sponsors trips, symposia, soirees, and services.

This year, an estimated 2,150 celebrants showed up for the 1984 bash: 850 Class members, 500 spouses, and 800 children. “It’s a new record,” said Michele Blanc, senior associate director of classes and reunions for the Harvard Alumni Association.

That’s a small town’s worth of people. They required a lot of food, a lot of lights at night, a lot of water, and a lot of refillable cups at a lot of portable bars.

But 25th reunion planners banned bottled water at events, set tables with plates and utensils that turn into compost, rode bio-diesel buses, and kept paper to a minimum with few mailings, a flurry of e-mail, and an interactive Web site.

This Reagan-era class was already famous for including public service work in its reunions years ago. (This year, it was a Saturday morning “green-up” clean-up along the Charles River.)

Now the Class shares a collective hope that Harvard’s first explicitly green reunion will be its lasting gift to future Class reunions — a template they can use, expand upon, and enjoy.

There’s no formal template in place yet, said Blanc, but “I’m sure ’85 will follow in ’84’s footsteps.”

“We set the groundwork,” said Anne S. Holtzworth ’84, a Boston-area political consultant still hoarse from catching up with old classmates last week. “Maybe next year they can go further.”

There are already glimmerings that going green might become standard practice at Harvard reunions.

Jason Luke ’94 said of the 1984 event, “Things they’re doing will be what a lot of reunions in the future do.”

Luke, who was co-chair of his 15th reunion this year, is associate director of custodial and support services at Harvard’s Facilities Maintenance Operations. For more than a decade he’s been in charge of infrastructure, water, and energy at every Commencement.

Many Harvard events already emphasize composting over recycling and recycling over trash, he said. But sometime in the future, Luke predicted, the waste standard for Harvard events will be 100 percent composting.

The green theme was a hit among those returning for the 1984 reunion. “People got into the spirit of it,” said Holtzworth.

The spirit will last, apparently. Without scolding, the planners will ask this year’s 25th reunion registrants to make up for the carbon they spent getting here — by taking the next year to make energy-reducing lifestyle adjustments.

An exact calculation for the required reduction is forthcoming, said Gary Pforzheimer ’84, co-chair of the green reunion committee.

But reducing energy at home has more meaning, and carries more educational punch, he said, than just buying carbon offsets in the marketplace.

As it happens, the Class of 1984 is already primed to offset carbon at home.

According to a Class survey taken before the reunion, two-thirds of the 467 respondents “always or usually” recycle paper and plastic, turn out lights, lower thermostats, and use efficient appliances.

More than a hundred commute by bicycle. Ninety classmates — about 20 percent of survey respondents — drive hybrid cars.

For more glimpses of energy frugality, look in the Class’ book-length 25th anniversary report. One former Wall Street lawyer gave up taxis in favor of a foot-powered scooter. A magazine writer, also in New York City, noted that his family has no car — but three strollers.

The Class of 1984 has an apparent penchant for Earth-saving exercise. Among the brain surgeons, concert violinists, and financiers are a steady tide of marathoners, triathletes, swimmers, cyclists, duckpin bowlers, fencers, sailors, scuba divers, cricketers, and at least one member of an all-gay mountaineering team.

Holtzworth speculated that some of the ideas for offsetting carbon at home would come from the Harvard Sustainability Pledge. Class of 1984 attendees at the reunion signed a version of the pledge before arriving in Cambridge.

Meanwhile, none of the food at the reunion was from more than 250 miles away, said Pforzheimer, and waste often went straight to compost.

The 25th reunion was alive with messages about green living, but it was still fun, he said. “Nothing we did got in the way of a good time.”

One of the many months of New England farm abundance, June gives us fresh beets, cabbage, collards, kale, greens, radishes, and rhubarb.

June also gives us the start of Harvard’s two weekly farmers’ markets, open for the season through October.

Organizers promise a celebration of fresh, regional goods from a medley of vendors: bakers, beekeepers, chocolatiers, cheese makers, and local farmers.

The regional farmers, none farther than 50 miles from Harvard Yard, provide the poem of produce that marks every month of the growing season: the snap peas of June, the peaches of July, the corn of August, the peppers, pears, and pumpkins of September — and more.

Last year the Cambridge market (which opened in 2006) doubled in size. “It gets bigger every year,” said Theresa McCulla ’04, administrator of the Food Literacy Project at Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS).

Farmers’ markets illustrate “very explicitly” what food literacy means, she said: “a constant mindfulness” about what we eat.

McCulla, a onetime Romance languages concentrator, gave up a job as a media analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency to pursue her true passion in life: good food — and the nutrition it offers, the beauty it possesses, and the community it engenders.

She and other experts see farmers’ markets as a way of getting the freshest food, learning how to prepare it, and meeting the people who grow it.

And at markets like this, said McCulla, the money you spend goes directly to producers. (For food sold in a supermarket, farmers get only about 17 cents of every dollar.)

Then there’s sustainability: the practice of living within our means, environmentally speaking.

“Food is a gateway issue for sustainability,” said Heather Henriksen, director of Harvard’s Office for Sustainability. “Everyone eats.”

Farmers’ markets are sustainable in many ways, she said. “They bring communities together, create jobs, provide educational opportunities, and open access to healthy foods.”

Farmers’ markets provide local and in-season food that minimizes transportation from farm to table, said Henriksen. (By one estimate, a typical carrot travels more than 1,800 miles to reach the dinner table.)

“The farmers pick the produce the morning it’s sold,” said McCulla of the Harvard markets. “It’s important for shoppers to know it’s so fresh and so close.”

Farmers’ markets are also classrooms of a sort. Shoppers can pick up cooking tips, sample regional foods they may never have heard of, and learn the value of freshness.

Last year, McCulla — who directs the market near Harvard Yard — saw a shopper walk by, eating from a pint of Concord grapes. He asked his friend, “Have you tasted these grapes? They’re not normal grapes.”

“I love overhearing things like that,” she said.

“A farmers’ market is actually a chance to see what’s happening seasonally,” said Crista Martin, HUDS director of marketing and communications. “It’s such a different experience to get a bean when it’s available — fresh that day.”

The markets are a culinary history lesson too, she said. “It gives me an appreciation of what it must have been like to eat in New England” before the advent of supermarkets.

Martin, who grew up on a family farm in Delaware, is astonished all over again every year at the variety — sometimes the oddity — of regional foods at the markets — like bright orange squash blossoms, and long beans from a Hmong farmer who grows Asian vegetables and herbs.

Then there are “tomatoes of every color,” said Martin: purple, green, and variegated reds. “They’re beautiful.”

In season, there are maxixe, said McCulla — cucumberlike vegetables that look like spiky green pine cones. And don’t forget the fresh local breads, dessert sauces, jams, pies, pastries, artisan honeys, and regional chocolates.

“All these new taste experiences make everything worth it,” said Martin. “It’s fun to be at the market and see people unable to resist eating what they just bought.”

Both markets will accept Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) food stamps, Women, Infant & Children (WIC) vouchers, and Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP) coupons.

Vendors at the Allston market will also accept Boston Bounty Bucks, which in Boston double the value of food stamps for purchases of between $1 and $10.

New this year at the Cambridge market is Cape Ann Fresh Catch, a community-supported fishery. Buy a share or a half-share and you get part of the weekly catch from the seas off Gloucester, Mass. — hake, dabs, grey sole, flounder, cod – “whatever’s abundant,” said McCulla, “super-fresh and never frozen.”

The farmers’ markets will reach beyond food. During a June 26 kick-off celebration at the Allston market, landscaping experts from Harvard’s Facilities Maintenance Operations will offer tips on home-scale organic composting, modeled on efforts already under way at the University.

The Office for Sustainability will have a display set up too. It will have top-10 tips on sustainable living, lessons in low-impact transportation and energy usage, and activities like a water tasting, a recycling game, and more.

Other special events will take place in Allston through the season.

In the market near Harvard Yard, local chefs will offer weekly food demonstrations, using ingredients from vendors at tents and tables nearby. (On June 16, the guest chef will be Jody Adams of the Rialto Restaurant in Cambridge.)

Farmers’ markets also give shoppers a refreshed sense of community, said Martin. “It’s one of those times you get the best-of-the-neighborhood feeling.”

And it gives shoppers a glimpse of a largely hidden world: artisan shops, corner bakeries, and — most of all — local farms.

“We do lose track, riding on the T every day,” said Martin. “These guys are operating just beyond the edge of town.”

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Over the next 18 months, the museum will improve teaching and research access, preservation, and storage for its map collection of nearly 4,000 unique, hand-drawn, and annotated documents dating as early as the 1840s. The historic maps and other documents from research expeditions are associated with the museum’s collections and with Harvard’s Department of Anthropology fieldwork of the past 140 years. They include ethnographic and linguistic field maps, site plans, large-sized watercolors, and sketches of archaeological sites and artifacts from North, Central, and South America and beyond. There are also architectural drawings documenting American anthropological history as well as vital records of the Peabody Museum, the oldest museum dedicated to anthropology in the Western hemisphere.

Jeffrey Quilter, deputy director for curatorial affairs and curator of Intermediate Area collections, offers an example of one the collection’s important highlights: “Alfred V. Kidder’s work at Pucara, Peru, was pathbreaking. As in so many cases of Peabody Museum research, the investigations there were in the vanguard of research for its day, and the materials remain highly important today. The Pucara work has been underpublished, and access to these materials is vital for ongoing scholarship.”

Harvard physicist Lisa Randall is taking Paris’ operagoing public to the fifth dimension this month, working with a composer and artist to present an opera that incorporates Randall’s theories about extra dimensions of space.

Randall, a theoretical physicist whose ideas were presented in her 2005 book, “Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions,” wrote the libretto for the opera, which is to be presented June 14 and 15 at Paris’ Pompidou Center.

Randall, who plans to be there for the premiere, said the opera is an opportunity to present to a new audience the ideas of physics and the notion that the universe is a more complex and subtle place than our daily experience may indicate.

“There are a lot of people who have never read a book about physics who still want to understand the new ways we think about the universe,” Randall said. “People will follow only so much literally, but the [opera presents the] idea that there is a bigger space to explore and that connections can be revealed that are harder to see from the perspective of a lower-dimensional world.”

The work, called “Hypermusic Prologue: A Projective Opera in Seven Planes,” tells the story of a man and a woman who have different views of the world. The baritone looks at the world around him and is satisfied with what he sees and the sense of reality it gives him. The soprano, a physicist and composer, has a more open view of reality and a more questing spirit. She travels to and explores a fifth dimension. The opera is a musical conversation between the two.

“It was fascinating to work with the artist and director to try to solve the challenges of staging something like this, trying to show the contrast between his limited world and her more open world, keeping the baritone’s space more restrictive without being too small and theatrically boring,” Randall said.

Randall wrote the text for the opera while Spanish composer Hèctor Parra wrote the music. Artist Matthew Ritchie designed the sets.

The project began shortly after Randall published “Warped Passages” in 2005. She was contacted by Parra, the son of a physicist who had read the book and thought its ideas would make an interesting opera.

“What I saw was the possibility to play with the relationship between energy, mass, and time … to make two people live inside this model,” Parra said.

Parra said he just jumped in after the idea came to him, sending Randall a long e-mail explaining what he wanted to do. Randall, who has no music background but who enjoys art and music and has a keen interest in explaining the ideas of physics to the general public, was intrigued by the idea. The two corresponded by e-mail and then met in Berlin in 2006. Randall said she thought that extra dimensions would be a good metaphor for exploration and creativity.

“We met a couple of times to figure out what would work. I sort of had the general concept from the beginning, but of course it has evolved since then,” Randall said. “It’s a very exciting project, combining musical and scientific ideas. We all found our repertoires expanded.”

Though the opera doesn’t seek to directly map the theories of physics onto the artistic world of opera, Randall said it contains more ideas from physics than she originally intended. Both Parra and Ritchie urged her to include more, she said.

While the sets are designed to evoke otherworldly space, the music expresses the ideas of physics as well, Parra said.

The man’s baritone voice is projected from a single speaker close to the character, while the woman’s soprano is projected from multiple speakers around the auditorium. Her voice is also distorted electronically, compressed for some sections, while the baritone is time-delayed, as if it were losing energy. In her journey, the woman discovers the unification of the four basic forces of nature, with music representing their different characteristics: long and slow for gravity, which operates across the vast distances of space, and high-pitched and insectlike for the strong force, which acts within the atomic nuclei.

“It’s the ideas and feelings [of the theories]. … I don’t use the mapping of data,” Parra said. “The audience isn’t obligated to understand anything Lisa does. They will feel anguish, they will feel unification and accomplishment. … They can enjoy the voices and the sound itself without knowing the specific equations.”

The opera, which is in English, will be performed in Barcelona in November and possibly in other locations around Europe.

“Physicists try to know reality,” Parra said, “while artists try to create a world.”