NEW YORK — It has been five years since Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of Harvard University, suggested at an academic conference that innate differences might explain why fewer women than men succeed in science and math careers. His remark sparked a firestorm that brought many changes — among them, Mr. Summers’s resignation and the naming of the university’s first female president, Drew Gilpin Faust.

Although many top universities took action in the early 2000s to help women, especially women in science, Harvard, under Mr. Summers, had an unimpressive record. Tenure offers to women plummeted after he took office in 2001. While Harvard extended 13 of its 36 tenure offers to women the year before Mr. Summers became president, that dropped to 4 of 32 the year before his speech. And several departments did not have a single tenured female professor.

Then, at a conference in January 2005, Mr. Summers delivered his now infamous remarks.

He told the audience that “there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude,” which he said were reinforced by “lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.”

Harvard has changed since then. Last year, tenure offers went to 16 women and 25 men. Universitywide, slightly more than a quarter of Harvard faculty members are women, an all-time high, with senior faculty accounting for most of the increase. And not only is the president a woman, but so are the deans of the engineering school, the law school, the education school and Harvard College and the Radcliffe Institute.