Beginning in 1925, Harvard scholars
Henry Osborn Taylor,
Alfred North Whitehead and
Lawrence Joseph Henderson met several times to discuss their frustration with the conditions of graduate study at the university. They believed that in order to produce exceptional research, the most able men required freedom from financial worries, fewer formal requirements, and the liberty to choose whatever object of study attracted them. They soon found an ally in then-Harvard-president
Abbott Lawrence Lowell who appointed a committee in 1926, with Henderson as chairman, to study the nature of an institution that might improve the quality of graduate education. The committee recommended the establishment of a Society of Fellows at Harvard, modeled particularly on the Prize Fellowship at
Trinity College, Cambridge, After years of trying to attract outside donations, Lowell funded the Society himselfhis last major institutional act before his resignation in November 1932. Though it was an open secret that Lowell was the source of the anonymous donation, this was never acknowledged in his presence. After Lowell's death in 1943, the donation was officially made public; it is known as the Anna Parker Lowell Fund in memory of Lowell's wife. The society was officially inaugurated as an alternative to the Ph.D. system with the beginning of the 193334 academic year, granting fellows freedom to pursue lines of inquiry that transcended traditional academic disciplinary boundaries. Because of the core belief in the importance of informal discussions between scholars in different academic fields, both senior and junior fellows have met for dinner every Monday night during term-time. Originally headquartered in a two-room suite at
Eliot House, one of the university's twelve residential colleges, the society was closed to women until 1972, when
Martha Nussbaum was selected as the first female junior fellow. ==Current senior fellows==