Hearts and Minds
Lovers of learning meet the loves of their lives at Harvard Griffin GSAS
Scholars and scientists come to the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences because of their love of knowledge. While here, they sometimes also find the loves of their lives. This Valentine's Day, three alumni and student couples share their stories of meeting and matching while on their graduate school journey.
A Song of Ice and Fire
Sudarshana Chanda, PhD Candidate, History
Ian Hunt-Isaak, PhD Candidate, Applied Physics
Sudarshana Chanda’s dissertation, “Imaginary Boundaries: Race and Inter-Ethnic Intimacy in British Malaya, 1920–1960,” studies the intimate life of racial categories in British Malaya (present-day Malaysia and Singapore) in the twentieth century. In the lab of Harvard Professor Doeke R. Hekstra, Ian Hunt-Isaak studies how heterogeneity develops in populations of yeast when exposed to environmental stressors.
We met during the pandemic year, 2020–2021. Ian was a Student Center Athletics Fellow. Sudarshana was an outings fellow. It was a rough time to be either. We saw each other on Zoom during the semi-monthly fellows meetings but never talked.
On February 19, 2021, Mona Dai, the other outings fellow, observed that Sudarshana probably hadn’t seen much snow growing up in Calcutta, India. She invited her to come and build a snowman in Harvard Yard with Ian and coordinating fellow Lindsey Brown.
Outside, Sudarshana labored to form a snowball. As it crumbled for the umpteenth time in her hands, she looked up. There was Ian. She was touched by the fact that he noticed her struggling and volunteered to help. She also noticed that Ian asked questions instead of talking only about himself and his research. For his part, Ian was struck by how readily Sudarshana dove into building the snowman, despite it being new and unfamiliar.
When we were done, Sudarshana christened the chilly creation Robert Frost and read the poet’s “Fire and Ice”:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Charmed, Ian smiled under his mask. She was adventurous and recited poems!
Afterward, our group got hot chocolate from L.A. Burdick’s in Harvard Square. Standing outside, we removed our masks for the first time and saw each other in person. When the night wrapped up, she took his cell number—she swears it was to Venmo him for the drinks—and we started talking. We became friends. Over long walks, often late at night in the cold, we shared our anxieties and hopes. Over cooking and board games, we discovered our shared values and joys. Gradually, friendship turned into something more.
When we’d been seeing each other for a few months, Sudarshana reached a crossroads. She had planned to travel to Southeast Asia for research but also wanted to stay and nurture this fledgling relationship. Moreover, the pandemic was still raging, and much of the region she planned to visit was still under lockdown. Conflicted, she told herself she should take off because—We’re here to do research after all, right? But one of her mentors gave her a piece of advice that stays with her even now: “Never underestimate the power of your personal happiness on your creativity and productivity.” She postponed the trip, and when she finally went, Ian went to visit her in the UK.
We’ve been married since May 2023. Our relationship is inextricable from Harvard Griffin GSAS: all the lunches at Lehman Hall, the coffees, Student Center events, and all of the friends who were RAs at the school’s residence halls where we both lived in our first years. Our friend Mona even officiated at our wedding. We both hope to graduate this year, but we’re a little bit nervous. We’re not sure what it will be like to be a couple separate from the school!
Red Line and Wine
Jennifer Gordon, PhD '93, Economics
Brian Schmidt, PhD '93, Astronomy
Jennifer "Jenny" Gordon is an honorary professor at the Australian National University's (ANU) Centre for Social Research and Methods and a non-resident fellow at POLIS: Centre for Social Policy Research, one of Australia’s leading think tanks on foreign policy. Her husband, Brian Schmidt, is a distinguished professor at ANU, where he was formerly vice-chancellor. In 2011, Schmidt, Adam Riess, PhD ’96, and UC Berkeley’s Saul Perlmutter won the Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe.
We both lived in Perkins Hall in 1989, where Jenny was a resident advisor (RA) on the second floor and Brian was on the first. We got to know each other through the joint floor social events that the RAs organized with the help of residents. Brian loved to cook, so he was always helping out.
In January 1990, the beginning of the spring term, the administrative dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, John Fox, sponsored a bunch of graduate students to go up to Maine and stay at his family home for a skiing holiday. That was where we got to know each other better. It was followed up by a ski trip a few weeks later, which turned out to be our first date, even if we didn’t really know it until the end of the day.
On Valentine’s Day, a week or two later, Brian invited Jenny to the Locke-Ober restaurant, a Boston institution now sadly extinct, for what would be our first official date. We were set to meet at the Park Street MBTA station and walk to the restaurant, but the T shut down due to an accident. It was a chaotic start to the night! Brian was completely beside himself for being late. (There were no mobile phones in those days.) Jenny took it in stride, knowing we would just meet up when it was possible.
We showed up to Locke-Ober an hour late. The waiter was less than impressed. (“You took the T to come to our restaurant?!”) Brian got flustered when handed Locke-Ober’s extensive list of wine, about which he knew nothing. Jenny informed him that he had better learn if he wanted to date an Australian. He did and, with Professor David Latham, started a wine-tasting group that still meets at Harvard’s Centre for Astrophysics. (We went just last year while on sabbatical.)
Brian still loves to cook and is still learning about wine, making it, and growing grapes on our farm outside of Canberra. We still love to ski when we can (cross-country these days) and continue to balance the competing demands of work, farm, and family. And it all began at Perkins Hall.
A History of Good Chemistry
Allen Aloise, PhD '04, Chemistry & Chemical Biology
Linzy Brekke-Aloise, PhD '07, History
Allen Aloise is Harvard Griffin GSAS's dean for administration and finance. Previously, he served as director of graduate studies for FAS Science and the director of laboratories for Harvard's Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology. Linzy Brekke-Aloise is an associate professor of history at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, where she serves on the standing committees of American studies and gender studies.
As first-year PhD students, we both lived on the first floor of Perkins Hall. The schedule and rhythms of a chemistry and a history graduate student were quite different, but we crossed paths a few times. One winter evening, Allen had his door open and was chatting with friends. Linzy passed by, recognized a friendly voice, and stopped to join the conversation. It was her first formal meeting with Allen, and she was struck by his neat and organized room. More than that, though, she wanted to know why a chemist had books of poetry on his shelf.
In the coming days, we “ran into each other” more frequently. Allen finally invited Linzy for coffee and a tour of his lab—a significant romantic gesture somewhat lost on a humanities student. Allen asked Linzy to indulge his love of Italian food at dinner in the North End, where he willingly ate vegetables he did not like from a shared antipasto to make a favorable impression on vegetarian Linzy. For her part, Linzy listened and learned about current topics in synthetic organic chemistry to show support for Allen’s science. That we were both willing to stretch ourselves and experience new things to support one another was a good sign for a burgeoning relationship.
Finding respite together on an ordinary day was a saving grace when we each experienced frustration or perceived a lack of progress on our research. Allen would pick up research books that Linzy needed from the Pusey Library stacks when he was on campus during the day and bring them home in the evenings when Linzy worked remotely. Linzy would deliver a special meal or muffins for Allen and his coworkers when they were pulling a late night in the lab. We enjoyed blowing off steam running along the Charles River, working out at the Malkin Athletic Center, and grabbing a beer or cheap eats at John Harvard’s, Grendel’s Den, and Charlie’s Kitchen.
We both had two dimensions to our identities: first-generation college students with blue-collar upbringings that set us apart from many of our peers at Harvard and an expansive intellectual curiosity that often set us apart from the peers we grew up with. We found a home in each other, where both aspects of our identities could coexist and be embraced.
The journey to a PhD is long and arduous. We served as each other’s life raft, buoying one another through choppy waters. We read each other’s scholarship (to the best of our disciplinary abilities!) and found inspiration in our shared purpose: to live a life of the mind and empower future generations of scholars.
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