BUCKYVERSE

Fuller's Harvard Years

Family Legacy

Fuller entered Harvard in fall 1913 as a legacy admission. His father, Richard Buckminster Fuller Sr., was a fourth-generation Harvard graduate. His great-aunt was Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), the transcendentalist writer, Dial co-founder, author of Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and notably the first woman permitted to use Harvard's libraries. Margaret's father Timothy Fuller graduated from Harvard in 1801.

First Expulsion (1914)

During freshman year, Fuller withdrew his entire tuition and expense money and went to New York City, where he blew it all in a single night hosting a lavish dinner for the cast of a show — most sources identify the troupe as performers from the Ziegfeld Follies. Harvard expelled him. After expulsion, his family sent him to work at a cotton mill in Sherbrooke, Quebec, where he developed hands-on machinery proficiency that proved more formative than anything Harvard offered.

Second Expulsion (1915)

His mother insisted he return; he was readmitted fall 1914. He declined to concentrate in mathematics (which he considered "too easy"), chose literature and political science, and quickly lost interest. Expelled again, cited for "irresponsibility and lack of interest." He never returned for a degree.

Discrepancies

The chorus-line story varies: "a vaudeville troupe," "the entire cast of the Ziegfeld Follies," or a specific performer (Marilyn Miller). The EBSCO biography attributes his difficulties partly to social rejection due to his appearance (5'2", thick glasses, pronounced limp), framing the spending spree as rebellion against Harvard's social hierarchy.

Norton Professor of Poetry (1961-62)

Nearly fifty years after being expelled, Harvard invited Fuller back as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry for 1961-62. The Norton Professorship, established 1925, defines "poetry in the broadest sense." Previous holders: T.S. Eliot (1932-33), Igor Stravinsky (1939-40), Robert Frost; later holders included Borges, Bernstein, Toni Morrison. Fuller shared the appointment with architects Felix Candela and Pier Luigi Nervi. He lived at Quincy House, delivered marathon lectures without notes (two and a half hours at a stretch), and produced Education Automation (1962). The appointment was made partly "because he sometimes expressed complex ideas in verse."

Honorary Degrees

Fuller never completed any formal degree but received 47 honorary doctorates. Harvard later established the R. Buckminster Fuller Professorship of Design Science at the GSD.

Sources