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The Story of the Anchor — Margaret Mair

Few people in the Greater Hartford community know the real story behind the huge ship’s anchor that everyone passes as they drive by or onto the University campus. The anchor originally belonged to the USS Hartford, the flagship of Admiral David G. Farragut. The ship was launched in Boston in 1858 and pressed into service during the Civil War battle of Mobile Bay. The US Navy donated the anchor to the University in 1958 as part of a military historic preservation scheme whereby military artifacts found new life on American college campuses.
Almost every college and university has one statue or artifact that draws out the inner prankster in generations of undergraduates. The University of Hartford is no exception.
University fraternities and sororities have taken turns

The University of Hartford anchor in the late 1950s,
shortly after it was installed.

painting the anchor with their colors since the anchor was acquired. According to an article in the Observer written by Betty Waugh for the January 25, 1979 issue, University administration was at first alarmed by the practice but finally decided that the students, “needed something to paint.” The first fraternity to decorate the anchor was Upsilon Xi. Today, campus groups must request permission before painting the anchor.
More information on the anchor and the USS Hartford may be found in the Archives. The University archives contain photos of the ship, correspondence from Farragut, and the July 1864 general order sending the Hartford to Mobile Bay.

Book Signing at Mortensen Library — Terri Raimondi

Jason Socrates Bardi ’95 signed copies of his newly published book, The Calculus Wars: Newton, Leibniz and the Greatest Mathematical Clash of All Time (Pocket Essentials, April, 2006), on Monday, May 8, in the Woods Family Center for Learning and Instruction, Mortensen Library. Bardi discussed the book and conducted a question-and-answer session. The event was sponsored by the Physics Department.
For the first time, the book discusses the long and bitter dispute over the discovery of calculus by the greatest scientific giants of all time, Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Today, Newton and Leibniz are generally considered the twin independent inventors of calculus, and are both credited with giving mathematics its greatest push forward since the time of the Greeks. Had they known each other under different circumstances, writes Bardi, they

might have been friends, but each – openly and in secret – declared war against the other.
At the University of Hartford, Bardi was the first winner of the Belle K. Ribicoff Prize, which is awarded annually to a graduating senior. He graduated summa cum laude with a dual major in Physics and English, and was a member of the Sigma Tau Delta Honor Society and a recipient of the Regent Honors Award. He also won the Allen/Lawley Award in Physics and the Al and Nancy Hajek Scholarship, as well as several writing awards.
Bardi went on to earn a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, and he is now a science writer/editor in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases department at the National Institutes of Health. He was previously a science writer at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA.