Firth, Bate to Occupy Chairs Left Vacant By Demos, Jones

Roderick Firth will become the ninth Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, President Pusey has announced. He succeeds Raphael Demos, who is retiring.

The appointment of Firth, currently chairman of the Department of Philosophy, is effective July 1. Among his predecessors since the Alford chair was established in 1817 have been James Walker (later President of the University), Francis Bowen, George Herbert Palmer, Josiah Royce, and William Ernest Hocking.

Firth's studies have centered on the theory of knowledge, and on ethics. He has been on the Faculty nine years, and became a full professor in 1953.

Bate Becomes Lowell Professor

Walter J. Bate '39 will succeed Howard Mumford Jones as Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of the Humanities on July 1. Bate, a distinguished scholar in 18th century literature, is chairman of the Department of English.

The Lowell Professorship was established in 1956 for a scholar of outstanding quality with a strong commitment to encouraging undergraduates.

Bate spent most of this spring in Rome. He joined the Faculty in 1946, and became professor of English in 1956.

The Achievement of Samuel Johnson, which Bate wrote in 1955, received the Christian Gauss Prize of Phi Beta Kappa as an outstanding book of literary scholarship. His latest work, Prefaces to Criticism appeared in 1959.