Aucun des monuments qui ceignent la cour d’honneur de la Sorbonne ne témoigne des conditions de la naissance, au mitan du XIII^e siècle, de la plus vieille université de France, et l’une des plus vieilles d’Europe – Bologne et Salamanque lui disputent l’antériorité. Ni la chapelle, achevée en 1642 à l’initiative de Richelieu, reconvertie en éphémère temple de la Raison après la Révolution. Plus...

During World War I, chemist James Conant was deeply involved in research on what was considered the worst imaginable weapon: poison gas. During World War II, as a science adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt, Conant was so central to the development of the atomic bomb that he was at Alamogordo on July 16, 1945. His most disruptive act, however, may have come in the interim when, as Harvard's president, he helped put the university, and the nation, on the path toward a meritocracy by advocating adoption of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. More...