Thomas Dudley

Cambridge, MA

John Winthrop (1714–1779), a Harvard professor and Fellow of the Royal Society, lived on this site from 1746 until his death. One of colonial America's foremost scientists, he taught mathematics and natural philosophy, observed comets and planetary transits, and helped lay the foundations of American scientific inquiry. The marker honors a scholar celebrated in his day as the greatest American mathematician and philosopher of his time.

Cambridge, MA

Built in 1763 by the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Hollis Hall has sheltered Harvard students for more than two centuries and honors the Hollis family of London, whose generosity sustained the college for generations. In 1775-76 the building traded scholars for soldiers, serving as barracks for colonial troops during the siege of Boston.

Cambridge, MA

George Vasmer Leverett was a Harvard man through and through, earning his bachelor's in 1867, a law degree in 1869, and a master's in 1870 before making his mark as a lawyer, scholar, and university trustee in the decades after the Civil War. This memorial honors the gift that let Harvard knit together its growing northern grounds with the venerable College Yard, the leafy heart of the campus in Cambridge. Such benefactions were the quiet engine of the American university's Gilded Age expansion, as alumni fortunes were turned back into brick, shade, and open space.

Cambridge, MA

In these Cambridge rooms between 1955 and 1976, James D. Watson helped drive the revolution in molecular biology that followed the discovery of DNA's structure. From here he also planned the revival of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which he went on to direct. The site marks a nerve center of postwar American science.