Colleagues Remember Knowles at Memorial

Hundreds packed the pews of Memorial Church this morning to pay their respects to Jeremy R. Knowles, the meticulous British chemistry professor who guided the Faculty of Arts and Sciences through much of the last decade and a half.

The pedigree of those offering remembrances at today’s service reflected the standing in University that Knowles gained in his nearly 12 years as FAS dean: University President Drew G. Faust and former University President Neil L. Rudenstine were among those offering remarks, as well as Hanna H. Gray, a former member of the Harvard Corporation. Internationally renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma ’76 performed a selection from Bach, Knowles’ musical icon, for whom one of his sons—Sebastian—was named.

Recollections offered at the service painted a picture of a witty man, a shrewd academic, and a carefully critical, selfless administrator, whose influence, several speakers attested, remains with the University.

“Jeremy took me on as a project,” said Faust, who worked with Knowles while serving as the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Faust went on to recall that her lessons in the leadership from the venerable dean tended to take place in close proximity to a bottle of wine, and singled out one of his first instructions: “Deans don’t do laundry.”

Faust also mentioned Knowles’ “legendary red pen,” and the appraising eye that the dean brought to the affairs of the Faculty.

“Drew, he often said, with his eyebrows raised, I shall be beastly,” Faust said, recalling the lead-up to one of the former dean’s criticisms. Rudenstine related a remark from one of Knowles’ sons, who said that he “never saw anybody try so hard to minimize the detritus of entropy.”

Such determination was crucial for a man holding the demanding FAS deanship, which Rudenstine, who appointed Knowles to the position in 1991, called “one of those totally resistible positions.”

In the years leading up to his exit in 2002, Knowles would pull the Faculty out of a deficit and back building projects that included the refurbishment of freshman dormitories and the conversion of the old Freshman Union into a new humanities hub, the Barker Center. The reception following Knowles’ service was held in Annenberg Hall, in the shadow of the Memorial Hall tower which Knowles renovated during his first term as dean, healing the damage left over from a 1956 fire.

“Jeremy fixed things,” Faust said.

Returning to the helm of a Faculty in turmoil in 2006, Knowles provided a steady hand, restoring the calm that had been disrupted by the Faculty’s conflict with former University President Lawrence H. Summers the year before.

But beyond his service to the University, it was Knowles’ charm that was remembered above all else. Faust recounted seeing the dean dressed in drag in celebration of the merger of Harvard and Radcliffe: “It was his only time in his tenure as FAS dean, he said, that he had been called under-endowed.”

Chemisty colleague George M. Whitesides recalled making the decision to move from MIT to Harvard in 1982 after finding a bucket of roses and a bottle of champagne—a wry gift from Knowles—at his home one morning.

“I thought it was rather corny,” Whitesides said. “But I came.”

—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.