Good Fellows

Every year, when Harvard's Society of Fellows gathers for its first dinner, the Society's chairman rises from his seat and solemnly reads these admonitions: "You will practice the virtues and avoid the snares of the scholar. You will be courteous to your elders who have explored to the point from which you may advance, and helpful to your juniors who will progress farther by reason of your labors. Your aim will be wisdom and knowledge, not the reflected glamor of fame . . ."

In 15 years, 87 bright young men from colleges all over the U.S. have listened to these words, before stepping into a three years' scholar's dream. They are not required to take any courses or to work for any degree. No one tells them what to read. Harvard picked them because they were superior scholars who might do original and important work; but they are relieved of the scholar's curse--the footnoted theses and the stifling examinations that go with the Ph.D. Last week, Harvard looked back on the first 64 Junior Fellows, and with a properly muffled Cantabrigian pride pronounced the experiment satisfactory so far.

Klystrons & Triodes. Thirty-two of the 64 are now either full or associate professors; 21 of the 64 are on the Harvard faculty. The Fellows (now mostly between 30 and 40 years old) have written more than 50 books, from poetry to Klystrons and Microwave Triodes and a treatise on Financing New York City. Four are starred in American Men of Science. Among the 64: James B. Fisk, director of research on the Atomic Energy Commission; Robert B. Woodward, who synthesized quinine; Paul A.. Samuelson, one of the top U.S. economists. Other young Fellows: Mathematician Garrett Birkhoff, World Federalist President Cord Meyer Jr., Pulitzer Prizewinner Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (The Age of Jackson).

Out of Lowell's Pocket. Harvard's late President A. Lawrence Lowell, a Ph.D. himself, had little use for the Ph.D. pattern. "We have developed into a mass production of mediocrity,!' he wrote. "Instead of the attitude towards scholars: 'By their fruits ye shall know them,' the attitude became: 'By their degrees ye shall judge them.' " A few years before he retired, he appointed a board of scholars to suggest a better idea; the Society of Fellows was it. Lowell had to put up the original $1,500,000 himself ("nearly every cent I have," he told friends), because he found no outsider who believed in the plan.

Only six or seven new Fellows are chosen each year. They get, along with a silver candlestick, free room & board, $1,250 a year (tax free) and all expenses connected with their projects (one present expense: platinum for one Fellow's experiments). If they want to switch from biology to history, or if their three years' experiments fail, no one says a word. "We don't expect them all to be listed in Who's Who," says History Professor Crane Brinton, the Society's chairman. "On the other hand, none of them is in jail."

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