Innovation
Innovations from Harvard
For nearly 400 years, the Harvard community has made important contributions to scientific, scholarly, and humanitarian progress.
First things first
1954
The first organ transplant
On December 23, 1954, Harvard Medical School Professor Joseph Murray and his team performed a kidney transplant on a man who had been given just two years to live. The surgery ushered in the era of organ transplantation, giving hope to thousands of patients each year.
2023
The first logical quantum processor
Harvard researchers created the first programmable, logical quantum processor, enabling transformative benefits for science and society as a whole.
1908
The first M.B.A. degree
Harvard created the world’s first Master of Business Administration program in 1908 in response to the need for business leaders with a broad understanding of business functions.
Leading the way in learning
Sesame Street
Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Gerald Lesser was involved in the transformation of children’s media, with the 1969 debut of Sesame Street.
Reading braille
While at Harvard, Alex Tavares created The Read Read, a device which allows blind and visually impaired children to independently learn how to read using the same techniques teachers would use.
Multiple intelligences
Howard Gardner upended notions of how children think and learn, proposing that there is not a single intelligence that can be measured by one IQ test, but multiple intelligences, many ways of learning and knowing.
Medical breakthroughs
- 1961 – Harvard Chan School
Defibrillator
Bernard Lown developed the direct-current defibrillator, which provided a new approach for resuscitating patients, paved the way for new possibilities in cardiac surgery, and saved countless lives.
Defibrillator- 1968 – Harvard Chan School
Oral Rehydration Therapy
Richard Cash’s mix of table salt, sodium bicarbonate, and glucose has saved tens of millions from diarrheal disease death.
- 1991 – Mass General Hospital
Functional MRI
Harvard Researchers pioneered this revolutionary way of measuring brain activity in real-time.
- 2025 – Harvard Medical School
Gene-editing medicine
A first-of-its-kind therapy promises to have a monumental impact on sickle cell disease patients.
- 2016 – Harvard Innovation Labs
Portable surgery
SurgiBox, a portable operating room, makes surgery safer for patients in warzones and disaster-affected areas.
1854
A baking revolution at Harvard
While working at Harvard, Eben Norton Horsford invented baking powder, allowing baked goods a way to rise without waiting the hours it takes yeast to work properly.
Athletic advancements
The forward pass
When looking to make American football safer, widening the field was proposed. The concrete stadium at Harvard wouldn’t allow for a wider field, so the forward pass was proposed instead.
The golf tee
Harvard Dentist Dr. George Grant was passionate about dentistry, as well as golf. Before his invention of the wooden golf tee, golfers teed up the ball by mounding dirt to form a cone.
The catcher’s mask
The first piece of protective equipment in American sports, the baseball catcher’s mask, was developed by Frederick W. Thayer while at Harvard.
An innovation hub
Harvard is a gathering place where great minds can collaborate and create amazing things.
Supporting Harvard innovators from idea to venture building through guidance, community, funding, and other resources.
Providing competitive grants to Harvard individuals and teams with innovative ideas and pilots.
Championing entrepreneurship and the commercial deployment of cutting-edge research, advancing technology-driven solutions that can change the world.
Advancing science, fostering entrepreneurship, and translating Harvard innovations into solutions that make the world a better place.
Bringing education to everyone
Starting in 1949, Harvard Extension School began broadcasting Harvard courses on the radio. TV courses followed in 1956. This Harvard tradition of open access continued with the creation of first-of-its-kind massive open online courses in 2012, and broadened further with programs like Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard and the Caselaw Access Project from Harvard Law School.
Technological marvels
Harvard’s Jefferson Physical Laboratory, the oldest physics lab in the United States, has been innovating since 1884.
Engineering the past and the future
Modern breakthroughs like the metalens—a lens using nanostructures to revolutionize light manipulation—are part of a long tradition for researchers at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who have pioneered everything from the antennas used in mobile phones to virtual reality headsets.
Engineering the past and the future- 1944 – School of Engineering
Programmable computer
With 765,299 parts and 530 miles of cable, the Mark I was the most complex electromechanical device of its time.
- 2022 – Salata Institute
Tracking methane
MethaneSAT is the first satellite that can measure a greenhouse gas anywhere on the planet in real time.
- 1919 – School of Engineering
Electrical communication
George Washington Pierce created dependable oscillators, which led to advances in radio, telephones, and timekeeping.
- 2024 – Office of Technology Development
Next generation of batteries
A new lithium metal battery can be recharged in a matter of minutes, up to 6,000 times.
Robot revolution
The first autonomous, entirely soft robot
A team of Harvard researchers created the first autonomous, untethered, entirely soft robot. Soft robotics could revolutionize how humans interact with machines.
Pioneering robots to improve mobility
A soft, wearable robotic device helps stroke survivors and people with movement impairments regain mobility and independence.
The first autonomously navigated medical robot
In 2019, bioengineers led by Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital created a robotic catheter that navigates the body autonomously—the surgical equivalent of a self-driving car.
Great moments in global relations
Helping Europe after World War II
In his commencement speech at Harvard in 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall announced the creation of one of the largest international economic aid programs in history.
Better understanding the Cold War
Thomas Schelling’s theories on the behavioral strategies in nuclear war shaped the course of events in the Kennedy administration during the height of the Cold War. Most notably, he showed how tacit cooperation can emerge between two conflicting parties.
Important innovators
Through his work with Partners in Health, Paul Farmer transformed the global health equity landscape. Today the organization is present in 12 countries, supports 230 facilities in collaboration with local governments, backs a global health equity university in Rwanda, and runs a modern teaching hospital in Haiti.
In her 1925 doctoral thesis, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin proposed that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Although her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected because it contradicted the science of the time, her work on the nature of variable stars was foundational to modern astrophysics.
Working at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1912, William Hinton was tasked with performing autopsies on those suspected of having died from syphilis. He became an expert on the disease and created a new blood test for diagnosing syphilis that was adopted by the U.S. Public Health Service.
As a founding director of Opportunity Insights, Raj Chetty helps create tools to identify barriers to economic opportunity and work on scalable solutions to empower people to rise out of poverty.
Elliott Joslin was one of the first physicians to introduce insulin as a treatment for diabetes in the United States. His three-pronged approach to diabetes care—diet, exercise and insulin—was not validated until after his death. His Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston continues to treat thousands of patients each year.
Karen Mapp was tasked with helping the U.S. Department of Education find a better way to build and sustain partnerships between educators and families. Her Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships offers guidance on how stakeholders at state, district, school, and family levels can best support children in their educational journeys.
An iconic 1958 experiment by Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl provided some of the first concrete evidence supporting the “double helix” model of DNA. Today, their work is recognized as one of the most beautiful experiments in modern biology.
1988
Harvard teamed up with Hollywood
In 1988, Harvard’s Center for Health Communication launched a campaign to prevent alcohol-related traffic fatalities which included working with TV writers to insert drunken driving prevention messages, including frequent references to designated drivers, into scripts of top-rated television programs, such as “Cheers,” “Dallas,” and “L.A. Law.”
A wonderful way with words
The first printing press in the British colonies
Two Native scholars, Wassausmon, also known as John Sassamon, and Wawaus, also known as James Printer, were printing apprentices who translated and printed the first bible in North America.
Translating ancient scrolls
Frank Moore Cross was one of the experts who pieced together and deciphered the Dead Sea Scrolls. His scholarship is still the essential resource for analyzing and dating these important texts.
A press for pressing issues
Founded in 1913, Harvard University Press is the publisher of enduring works of scholarship, including 12 Pulitzer prize-winning books.
Bringing the past to life
For more than 100 years, Harvard has been working to bring ancient Egypt to life for people all over the world.
In the 1920s and 30s, artist Joseph Lindon Smith, a member of the “Harvard Camp” dig house headquarters near the Pyramids in Egypt, was tasked with painting the finds of the excavations. Today, his brightly colored renderings of the sites can be seen in museums and remain valuable to scholars.
A full-scale reproduction of an ancient Egyptian throne belonging to Queen Hetepheres, dating to about 2550 BCE, was created at Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East in 2016.
The Digital Giza project at Harvard gives anyone with an internet connection access to the largest collection of information, media, and research materials ever assembled about the Pyramids and related sites on Egypt’s Giza Plateau.
Latest news and innovations
Keep up-to-date on news from each of Harvard’s Schools.