Mathematics Department at Glance

Mathematics has a long history at Harvard. In 1727 Isaac Greenwood was appointed the first Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. The first PhD at Harvard was awarded to William Elwood Byerly in Mathematics in 1873. The Department of Mathematics at Harvard has since become one of the world’s leading centers of research and education in pure mathematics. Current faculty of the Department include winners of the Fields Medal, Nobel Prize, Wolf Prize, Shaw Prize, Steele Prize, Veblen Prize, Breakthrough Prize, and Maryam Mirzakhani Prize. Our faculty have been awarded the National Medal of Science, MacArthur Awards, Guggenheim Fellowships, are members of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society and have been invited speakers at the International Congress of Mathematics, among other honors. Our Department consists of around 20 senior faculty, 20 Benjamin Peirce Fellows and other post-doctoral scholars, 20 teaching Preceptors and Lecturers, 60 graduate students, and about 300 undergraduate concentrators and joint concentrators. We have over 1800 individual undergraduate students enrolled in our Harvard College courses during the academic year.