A Doctor for Amherst

"A doctor tries to educate people to live," says Calvin Hastings Plimpton, 41, assistant dean of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. The sentiment sounded good to Massachusetts lively little (1,000 students) Amherst College. Last week Amherst named Alumnus ('39) Plimpton as its long-sought successor to able President Charles W. Cole, 54, who leaves this June after 14 good years to become vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

A polished product of a polished Massachusetts family, tall, dark, witty Physician Plimpton grew up in Plimptonville (really only a courtesy stop on the New Haven line), 18 miles out of Boston. No narrow specialist, he majored in English at Amherst (after Exeter), went on to Harvard Medical School and a World War II battle surgeon's post in Europe. Later he became chief resident at Columbia's prestigious Presbyterian Hospital, then chief of staff at Lebanon's American University Hospital during the U.S. landing in 1958.

Since he considers medicine as education, Plimpton reasons that giving up practice for pedagogy "isn't really so terribly much of a hop." The new president has another compensation: Amherst is already well-heeled (endowment: $24 million). Cracks Plimpton: "They told me definitely that I wouldn't have to start raising money for seven days."

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