Harvard professors are known worldwide for their minds, but after classes end, these bookworms can often be found not in libraries but instead in spandex, struggling to make their physiques live up to their intellects.

Dean for the Humanities Maria Tatar was busy riding her bike on Memorial Drive this past weekend when she phoned in to discuss her fitness routine.

“No matter how intellectual and high level a conversation among faculty may be,” she said while pedaling, “I’ve noticed that the last five minutes always turns to what people are doing to keep in shape.”

Squeezing fitness into a schedule packed with classes, meetings and book tours would make anyone sweat, but minds from the sciences and humanities alike somehow find time for more.

“My impression is that most of the faculty tries hard to keep in shape,” Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, wrote in an e-mail.

For Gross, this means a couple of games a tennis a week and a swim on the days he can’t hit.

His tennis partners include house masters Howard Georgi and Sean Palfrey in addition to President Lawrence H. Summers, the big man on campus.

But Summers holds down the baseline for more than just love of the game.

Last year, in a Crimson article, he attributed much of his weight loss to a “low carb, high tennis” diet.

In most cases, however, shedding pounds does not weigh as heavily.

Dean for the Social Sciences David Cutler, an expert in public health, is an avid runner and logs between 25 to 30 miles in a week. He has run three marathons in his lifetime, including last year’s Boston marathon. In addition to the obvious health benefits, Cutler says that running along the Charles is an opportunity to relax even if it means getting up at 6:30 a.m.

“What suffers in the end is sleep,” he said.

Some professors work exercise into their daily lives.

Tatar says that she uses her bicycle as the main means of transportation, and Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz said that he purposely parks far away from his destination in order to fit in more walking.

“I’m about to leave for the Red Sox game,” he said yesterday afternoon, “but I’m going to walk all the way there.”