Varmus: Science Focus Necessary

The United States must increase funding for scientific research and encourage young people to become scientists and physicians, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Harold E. Varmus told the Class of 1996 in his Commencement address on June 6.

"Science can improve lives in ways that are elegant in design and moving in practice," said Varmus, a who is a Nobel laureate.

To continue the cycle of medical research advanced by luminaries such as Jonas Salk, who discovered a vaccine for polio, the U.S. needs "new talent, enthusiasm for science, money and strong institutions," Varmus said.

Society needs to steer students toward science, he said, nothing that he himself became interested in medical research only after receiving a master's in English literature from Harvard.

Varmus pointed to universities and government institutions like the NIH as fundamental to scientific progress because they fund basic research, enabling doctors to cure diseases.

Although the path of medical research may seem slow, he said, the rate of progress is "astoundingly rapid in retrospect."

In his speech to the annual meeting of the Alumni Association on the afternoon of Commencement Day, Varmus addressed the discontent on campus surrounding his selection as Commencement speaker. He discussed the widespread sentiment within the senior class that his Nobel-winning discovery of cancer-causing oncogenes did not make him "exciting" enough to speak at a Harvard graduation.

"I speak for an element of our culture at least as important as politics or war," Varmus said.

Rudenstine's Address

In his annual report to the alumni and graduates at Commencement, President Neil L. Rudenstine also focused on science and technology, by discussing how the Internet will affect the structure of academia.

"The cluster of technologies that we call the Internet has very distinctive powers--to complement, to reinforce and to enhance many of our powerful traditional approaches to university teaching and learning," he said.

Rudenstine compared the growth of Internet usage within universities in the last few years to the period after the 1870s when "the huge information systems that we call university research libraries reached their point of takeoff in accelerated development."

As the emergence of the research library changed the face of scholarship and forced universities to address issues of information transmission, today the Internet presents similar challenges, Rudenstine said.

"There are moments of real transformation, and I believe that the emergence of the Internet is one of them," he said.

Eventually, he said, the Internet will serve to both give access to the tremendous amounts of information available and provide easy means of sorting through it all.

"The Internet and its successor technologies will have the essential features of a massive library system, where people can roam through the electronic equivalent of book stacks with assistance from the electronic equivalent of research librarians," Rudenstine said.

The Internet also has highly relevant capabilities as a medium for course materials, he said, citing Harvard Business School case studies which will soon be available online in a multimedia format.

Rudenstine, who has personally backed the University's move toward full Internet access, noted that while the Faculty of Arts and Sciences network had an e-mail traffic volume of 80,000 letters per day last year, this year's average is 215,000 letters per day.

But the president cautioned that the University's conscious move toward a high-quality technological infrastructure cannot succeed without the financial backing of alums and other donors.

"We must be prepared to do now--over the course of the next 10 to 20 years--what our predecessors achieved during the late 19th century, when they made a conscious decision to create unrivaled university research libraries, new curricula and new teaching methods," Rudenstine said

"I speak for an element of our culture at least as important as politics or war," Varmus said.

Rudenstine's Address

In his annual report to the alumni and graduates at Commencement, President Neil L. Rudenstine also focused on science and technology, by discussing how the Internet will affect the structure of academia.

"The cluster of technologies that we call the Internet has very distinctive powers--to complement, to reinforce and to enhance many of our powerful traditional approaches to university teaching and learning," he said.

Rudenstine compared the growth of Internet usage within universities in the last few years to the period after the 1870s when "the huge information systems that we call university research libraries reached their point of takeoff in accelerated development."

As the emergence of the research library changed the face of scholarship and forced universities to address issues of information transmission, today the Internet presents similar challenges, Rudenstine said.

"There are moments of real transformation, and I believe that the emergence of the Internet is one of them," he said.

Eventually, he said, the Internet will serve to both give access to the tremendous amounts of information available and provide easy means of sorting through it all.

"The Internet and its successor technologies will have the essential features of a massive library system, where people can roam through the electronic equivalent of book stacks with assistance from the electronic equivalent of research librarians," Rudenstine said.

The Internet also has highly relevant capabilities as a medium for course materials, he said, citing Harvard Business School case studies which will soon be available online in a multimedia format.

Rudenstine, who has personally backed the University's move toward full Internet access, noted that while the Faculty of Arts and Sciences network had an e-mail traffic volume of 80,000 letters per day last year, this year's average is 215,000 letters per day.

But the president cautioned that the University's conscious move toward a high-quality technological infrastructure cannot succeed without the financial backing of alums and other donors.

"We must be prepared to do now--over the course of the next 10 to 20 years--what our predecessors achieved during the late 19th century, when they made a conscious decision to create unrivaled university research libraries, new curricula and new teaching methods," Rudenstine said