A 30th Anniversary Family Photo

We often talk about the "Harvard Family," a phrase that rings hollow to some who find Harvard expressing the family love more passionately during fundraising season than other parts of the year. But after you've been teaching for awhile, it is impossible not to have a family love for people you knew years before, when they (and you) were younger and less formed. Santayana expresses beautifully the joy of working forever with the young, and yet seeing some of them in their maturity. "While w are young," he says, "and as yet amount to nothing, we retain the privilege of infinite potentiality. The poor actuality as not yet taken its place, and in giving one thing made everything else of ever unattainable." That seems a bit sour for a Harvard professor, even given that Harvard admissions did not have the standards in his day that it has in mine. In any case, today's students have enough job changes that they can certainly count on more than one realization of their potentiality. A few years after I started teaching, I started maintaining a list of my teaching fellows. I work with these students, including many undergraduates, very closely. Of course I pick only people who have already shown their promise in Harvard coursework, and then mentor them about taking responsibility for teaching and grading and helping each other be the best. It's a pretty amazing alumni club, including professors of computer science at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Cornell, and a bund of other top CS departments, as well as some prominent scientists in industry. The full list is posted here. I don't think there are any errors, but there are some lacunae in the early years; if by chance anyone out there can fill in the gaps I would greatly appreciate it. Many of these people stayed friendly with each other and with me long after that intense teaching experience. In fact two marriages (that I know of) emerged from the intimate experience of designing and grading problem sets and sharing teaching tricks. I haven't had any children of TFs as TFs, though I have certainly had some children of students as students! In the fall of 1982, I taught CS50, intro CS (it was then called AS11 and was a Pascal programming course). This was only the second year the course existed; today it has become legendary (see this lovely tribute to today's CS50 posted by an HBS student). We graded the hour exam on Halloween and after we were done doing that, the TFs were invited over to my house for dinner. One of them got the bright idea to get up in Harry Lewis Halloween costumes. I snapped this picture, which will be 30 years old in a few weeks. And here, including the people who did not make it into the picture, are their current affiliations as far as I know. Some of them are informed guesses. Again, if anyone can supply better pointers I would love to have them. Beth Adelson: Professor of Psychology, Rutgers U. Jonathon Amsterdam: Software engineer, Google Eric Carter: Cardiologist, Utah Melissa Chase: Department head, MITRE Michael Cote: Deceased Larry Denenberg: Software engineer, Tripadvisor Christoph Freytag: CS Professor, Humboldt University, Berlin Boo Gershun: Lives in Boston area Adam Gottlieb: Lost Lisa Hellerstein: CS Professor, NYU-Poly Charles Hurd: Team Lead, Instruments Data Systems Group at Susquehanna International Group (SIG) Philip Klein: CS Professor, Brown U. Larry Lebowitz: Chief Investment Officer, The Investment Fund for Foundations Joe Marks: previously head of Mitsubishi Lab in Cambridge and Disney Research, now with a startup Michael Massimilla: Senior Director, Software Architect at DealerTrack Ted Nesson: Senior Director of Engineering at Pegasystems Craig Partridge: VP for Network Research, Raytheon BBN John Ramsdell: Lost Rony Sebok: VP, Operations, 1 Beyond Margo Seltzer: CS Professor, Harvard Phillip Stern: FPGA Design Verification Lead, Teradyne John Thielens: Chief Architect, Cloud Services, Axway Anders Weinstein: Se