Pipe Dreams

Vladimir Nabokov came to Stanford in 1941 to teach and write, befriended by a suave and worldly professor who some suggest played a part in the classic Lolita.

by Cynthia Haven

Smitten with his first look at IBM s blinking box almost 50 years ago, Donald Knuth has devoted his career to elevating the art of programming. Can the man who helped shape computer science finish what he started?

by Kara Platoni

How does religious faith inform the lives of individual students, and what is its role in campus discourse? Efforts by the Office for Religious Life and a growing interfaith community are giving new meaning to the notion of spirited exchange.

by Diane Rogers

The winner of the Stanford fiction contest features a protagonist as world-weary as the Alzheimer s patient she cares for.

by Kathleen Founds

Hours after the 1906 earthquake shattered Stanford, a student from Arkansas wrote home to describe the scene. Her letters offer a vivid portrait of a university in shambles, but ready to rally.

Experts agree that farmed fish help feed the world. Stanford researcher Rosamond Naylor wants to make sure they don t ruin the environment.

by Paul Rogers

NRA president Sandra Froman, 71, combines legal brilliance and personal conviction to lobby for the nation s gun owners. Whether analyzing the Second Amendment or trading shots with gun control advocates, her aim is the same: to win the debate about firearms in America.

by Kevin Cool

by Simon Firth

Reed Hastings founded Netflix as a response to irritation over video store late fees, and now his company is the one rental chains want to emulate. Having prospered with direct-mail movies, can he lead the way toward on-demand entertainment?

by Joan O’C. Hamilton

As democracy in China struggles for a foothold, communication professor Jim Fishkin s deliberative polling experiment is pushing a governing principle that is both revolutionary and old-fashioned: ask the people what they want.

by Joel McCormick