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612 Importance of mentors50.7 The three decades at HarvardI’m just completing my 30th year at the Harvard Department of Statistics, andthese years have been fabulous ones, too. The first of those years renewed andreinforced my collaborations with Bob Rosenthal, through our co-teaching a“statistics for psychologists” course and our Thursday “brown-bag consulting”lunch. Other psychologists there have been influential as well, such as JerryKagan, a wonderfully thoughtful guy with a fabulous sense of humor, who wasa great mentor regarding personality theory, as was Phil Holzman with hisfocus on schizophrenia. We would all meet at Bill and Kay Estes’s spectacularChristmas parties at their “William James” house, with notable guests such asJulia Child, who lived down the block and reminded me of Eleanor Roosevelt.These personal connections to deep-thinking psychologists clearly affect theway I approach problems.These early years as Professor at Harvard also saw a real attempt to createsomething of a bridge to economics in Cambridge, initially through some 1990sefforts with Bob Solow and then Josh Angrist, both at MIT, and of course myclose colleague Guido Imbens now at Stanford, and then again with Guidomore recently in the context of our causal book and our co-taught course.Also, economist Eric Maskin, who recently returned to Harvard after a stintin Princeton, convinced me to teach a “baby causal” course in the “core” forundergraduates who had no background in anything technical — it was goodfor me and my teaching fellows, and hopefully some of those who took thecourse. Another economist who influenced me was the Dean who “hired me”— Henry Rosovsky — one of the wisest and most down-to-earth men I haveever met; we shared many common interests, such as classic cars and goodlunches. A wonderful mentor about academic life! Every academic should readhis book: “The University: An Owner’s Manual.”And of course there were the senior folks in Statistics: Art Dempster withhis principled approach to statistics, was always a pleasure to observe; FredMosteller and his push for collaborations and clear writing; and Herman Chernoff(whom I hired; he used to refer to me as his “boss” — hmm, despite mybeing over 20 years his junior). Herman attended and still, at 90 years, attendsmost of our seminars and offers penetrating comments — a fabulous colleaguewith a fabulous mind and subtle and clever sense of humor. And old friendCarl Morris — always a great colleague.50.8 ConclusionsI have intentionally focused on mentors of mine who were (or are) older,despite the undeniable fact that I have learned tremendous amounts from