Mr. Smith Stays in Cambridge
The retirement of Richard A. Smith '46 from the Harvard Corporation this June was announced in February 1996--prematurely. Although Henry Rosovsky '53, Ph.D. '59, Geyser University Professor emeritus, has stepped down as planned (and been succeeded by Hanna Holborn Gray, Ph.D. '57), Smith will stay on for at least two more years. The search for successors, by an advisory committee of Corporation members and Overseers, has focused on "the next generation," says Corporation member Robert G. Stone Jr. '45, who leads the effort. "We have a couple of candidates we'd really like," he notes, but "they're just so busy with their businesses they can't spend the time this calls for." The hope is that in the next few years, one of the preferred candidates will become available.
The Pusey Minister
Honoring Nathan Marsh Pusey '28, Ph.D. '37, LL.D. '72, Harvard's twenty-fourth president, on his ninetieth birthday, friends raised $2.5 million to endow the position of minister at Memorial Church in his name. The gift was announced April 12 at a dinner celebration at the Harvard Club of Boston attended by 130 guests, including 24 members of the Pusey family. Pusey, honorary chair of the church's capital campaign, said, "I can think of no finer way for me to be remembered at Harvard." The Reverend Peter J. Gomes, S.T.B. '68, appointed to the church by Pusey in 1970, thus becomes the first Plummer professor of Christian morals who is also Pusey minister in the Memorial Church.
Lawyer-in-Chief
The University's new vice president and general counsel is Anne Taylor. She succeeds Margaret H. Marshall, who was appointed associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court last fall. Taylor is a familiar face: she joined the office of the general counsel in 1983, and has worked there, except for brief stints in finance and human resources, ever since.
A Trio of Chairs
Harvard's first professorship devoted exclusively to environmental issues has been endowed by Gilbert Butler Jr. '59 in memory of his father, Gilbert Butler '09. Rotch professor of atmospheric science Michael B. McElroy, who chairs the department of earth and planetary sciences and the University Committee on the Environment, has been named the first Butler professor of environmental studies. H.T. Kung, McKay professor of electrical engineering and computer science and an expert on communications networks, is now the first Gates professor of computer science and electrical engineering. The chair was established by a gift from William H. Gates III '77, chairman of Microsoft Corporation. S. James Adelstein, M.D. '53, Cabot professor of medical biophysics, a nuclear medicine specialist and the Medical School's senior academic dean, has become the first Tosteson University Professor. The new chair honors Daniel C. Tosteson'46, M.D. '48, who retired from the medical school deanship, after 20 years of service, in June.
