Harry Lewis (AB’68, PhD’74) is Gordon McKay Research Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus, in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. As an undergraduate he at first made no great progress, despite his strenuous efforts, in mathematics, physics, drama, and intercollegiate athletics. He had the good fortune, however, to stumble into computer programming through a part-time job in a psychology laboratory and fell in love with the emerging field. After graduation, he served for two years as a commissioned officer in the US Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health and spent a year in Europe as Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellow.
He returned to Harvard in 1971 to enter the PhD program and joined the faculty in 1974, becoming Gordon McKay Professor in 1981. Undergraduate affairs have long been Harry’s first commitment; he birthed the Computer Science concentration in 1982, created several of the core undergraduate courses in the field, and has taught thousands of students, including the founders of Microsoft, Meta, and Tripadvisor and others who became computer science professors at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and elsewhere in the US and abroad. Harry also served in a variety of administrative roles—the faculty committee that in 1994 recommended randomizing the Houses, search committees for everything from Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid to Head Coach of Football, and Dean of Harvard College from 1995 to 2003 and interim Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2015. He taught his last class in the spring of 2025.
He also remains engaged in University affairs; he was a founding co-president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of EPIC, the nation's leading electronic privacy organization. His 2024 article in Harvard Magazine, "Mechanical Intelligence and Counterfeit Humanity," is a reflection on the AI explosion in the context of his six decades of involvement with computer science
