Dir. of Research at Bauer Center for Genomics at Harvard

Laura Garwin always seems to be knocking down walls.  Whether ending three quarters of a century of all-male Rhodes Scholars in 1977 or serving as Director of Research Affairs at Harvard University's Bauer Center for Genomics Research, Professor Garwin lives to end the artificial barriers that divide student from student and scientist from scientist.

Her own training underscores the rich scholarship that energizes her professional life.

     She earned an A.B. in physics from Harvard, a second A.B. in geology from Oxford and a Ph.d. in earth sciences from Cambridge University.  In the late 1980's she became physical sciences editor of Nature magazine and a decade later was appointed head of Nature's North American Office. Now as a director of the Bauer Center she runs a fellowship program that she sees as a "battering ram" that will undermine the separate discipline approach to scientific research and lead to a world in which physicists, biologists, geologists, mathematicians, and computer scientists collaborate and physicists become biologists and biologists become physicists.     

     As part of her ongoing effort to educate the American public about the world of science, she has reported on scientific matters for National Public Radio, and in 2003 edited A Century of Nature: Twenty-One Discoveries That Changed Science and the World.

     In the world outside of science, Professor Garwin has climbed many a wall.  At Harvard she played goalie on the women's water polo team and is a fine amateur trumpeter.