Harry R. Lewis
| Harry R. Lewis | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 1947 (age 69–70) Boston |
| Nationality | American |
| Title |
Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science (1981–present) Dean of Harvard College (1995–2003) Harvard College Professor (2003–2008) |
| Spouse(s) | Marlyn McGrath (1968–present) |
| Website | people |
| Academic background | |
| Education |
Roxbury Latin School Harvard University |
| Thesis title | Herbrand Expansions and Reductions of the Decision Problem |
| Thesis year | 1974 |
| Doctoral advisor | Burton Dreben |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline |
Computer science Mathematical logic |
| Sub discipline |
Decidability Theory of computation |
| Institutions | Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences |
| Doctoral students | |
| Notable students | |
Harry Roy Lewis (born 1947) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and university administrator known for his research in computational logic, textbooks in theoretical computer science, and writings on computing, higher education, and technology. He is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, and was Dean of Harvard College from 1995 to 2003.
Lewis has been honored for his "particularly distinguished contributions to undergraduate teaching"; his students have included future entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, and numerous future faculty members at Harvard and other schools. The website "Six Degrees to Harry Lewis", created by Zuckerberg while at Harvard, was a precursor to Facebook.
A new professorship in Engineering and Applied Sciences, endowed by a former student, will be named for Lewis and his wife upon their retirements.
Lewis was born in Boston and grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts. His parents were physicians, his mother the head of a school for intellectually disabled children. At the end of the eleventh grade he graduated summa cum laude from Boston's Roxbury Latin School, and in 1968 received his BA (summa, Quincy House) in applied mathematics from Harvard College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was for a time a third-string lacrosse goalie. As a senior he lectured a graduate class in applied mathematics using an early computer-graphics apparatus he had devised for visualizing mathematical concepts.
After two years as a mathematician and computer scientist for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, he spent a year in Europe as a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellow. He then returned to Harvard, where he earned his M.A. in 1973 and PhD in 1974. He became Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Harvard in 1974, Associate Professor in 1978, and has been Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science since 1981.
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