The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intellectual growth.
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.
[3] 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.
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.
[9] 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.