University to Establish Two Additional Chairs

Two new professorships will be created with money left to the College earlier this month by Mrs. A. Kingsley Porter. One may be a "University" professorship-a chair free of attachment to any single field, and carrying with it the highest academic distinction Harvard can offer.

That the professorship be of University rank was requested, but not required. Mrs. Porter's sole stipulation was that whatever its rank, the chair should be for only humanists or social scientists. In particular, she mentioned the fine arts, music, philosophy, and literature.

The second chair to be endowed with Mrs. Porter's money will go to whichever part of the University the Corporation wishes. President Pusey has not yet made any indication as to the exact field he will recommend to the Corporation.

Bequest Over $1 Million

Mrs. Porter left the University a direct bequest of slightly over $1 million. She asked for several specific expenditures, concerned in large part with libraries and museums; and she said that all remaining funds should be used to endow the new humanities-social sciences chair. A spokesman for the University's financial offices said yesterday that between $500,000 and $600,000 would be available for this purpose.

She also set up a $400,000 trust fund for an 89-year old sister. After the sister dies, this money will revert to the University and from it the Corporation intends to create the second professorship.

Settling Mrs. Porter's estate will probably take at least a year, with most of the time being needed to compute the taxes on the various bequests she made. Besides leaving money to the University and to her sister, she also willed funds to several other relatives.

Mrs. Porter was the wife of Harvard archeologist A. Kingsley Porter, and she asked that the humanities-social sciences professorship he named after him. If the chair is made a University professorship, it will be the twelfth of this kind. Among the current holders of University professorships are Paul H. Buck, I. A. Richards, Paul A. Freund, and Edward M. Purcell, Paul J. Tillich held a University professorship until his retirement last June.

The University receives about $15 million a year from trusts and bequests like Mrs. Porter's.

Mrs. Porter also left her home, once the residence of poet James Russell Lowell, and $35,000 for the maintenance of photographic and literary material given to the University by her husband.