Education: Fertilization

When Harvard’s President James Bryant Conant first broached his idea of establishing “roving professorships” whose holders could cut across rigid departmental divisions and fertilize the whole university, he told his friends that he was thinking of no imaginary scholar but of Harvard’s own restlessly roving William James (art-to-medicine-to-psychology-to-philosophy). A year ago Harvardman Thomas William Lament responded with a $500,000 endowment for a roving professorship, and President Conant last year indicated that he would finance a few more from the $5,500,000 Harvard received at its Tercentenary. Appointed last week was the first roving professor, 66-year-old Roscoe Pound, retiring dean of the Harvard Law School.

Most observers agreed that President Conant could not have made a happier choice. Roscoe Pound is as broad in knowledge as he is in beam. Before becoming a ranking authority on jurisprudence and a mighty scholar of the common law, he directed a botanical survey of his home State of Nebraska. He is as proud of the roscopoundia lichen as he is of his knowledge of Freemasonry and Civil War military history. Junketing in Europe last week, Roving Professor Pound in September will welcome as his successor in the job he has held for 21 years his onetime student, SECommissioner James McCauley Landis, roam Harvard to his mind’s content.