History

Around Christmas of 1882, while peering through a microscope at starfish larvae in which he had inserted tiny thorns, Russian zoologist Elie Metchnikoff had a brilliant insight: What if the mobile cells he saw gathering around the thorns were nothing but a healing force in action? Metchnikoff’s daring theory of immunity — that voracious cells he called phagocytes formed the first line of defense against invading bacteria — would eventually earn the scientist a Nobel Prize, shared with his archrival, as well as the unofficial moniker “Father of Natural Immunity.” But first he had to win over skeptics, especially those who called his theory “an oriental fairy tale.”

Most people who have stood beneath a redwood, necks craned to see its top 300 feet rising far above; or who have heard ghostly whispers of residents long-past among the burnt-red cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde; or who have climbed the stairs to gaze out from the Statue of Liberty's crown, would agree that our National Park system is a source of pride and wonder.

In the twentieth century, American mathematicians began to make critical advances in a field previously dominated by Europeans. Harvard's mathematics department was at the center of these developments. A History in Sum is an inviting account of the pioneers who trailblazed a distinctly American tradition of mathematics — in algebraic geometry and topology, complex analysis, number theory, and a host of esoteric subdisciplines.

At the most basic level, a cairn is a pile of rocks. But this definition doesn’t do justice to the myriad shapes and sizes of cairns found around the globe. Nor does it convey the many reasons that people have piled up stones for thousands of years, according to Seattle freelance David Williams. Cairns can indicate a trail, mark a grave, serve as altar or shrine, and reveal good hunting grounds and territorial boundaries.