University Names New Professorship In Honor of Poet

The wife of a late poet and Nobel laureate said Monday that she was lending her husband's name to a long-planned chair in Modern Greek Language and Literature.

The chair will be named after George Seferis, an internationally knows literary figure and diplomat who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963. He died in 1973.

Maro Seferis said in an announcement given to the Greek press in Athens that she expects financial support for the chair, which has not yet been funded, from the Greek-American community and from international literary figures.

The endowed professorship will cost about $1 million.

The University has wanted to create the professorship in Greek Studies for at least a decade.

The Corporation opened a fund to endow a chair in the field ten years ago, but, aside from a short-lived attempt under former president Nathan M. Pusey '28 to establish a whole department in modern Greek studies, nothing came of the idea until Athan Anagnostopoulos lecturer in classics at Boston University approached Dean Rosovsky this fall.

Rosovsky approved the plan for establishing the position in late December, and President Bok sent a letter to Seferis on February 18 saying that the University "would feel especially honored" to have the chair named after the writer.

A committee to raise funds for the chair is being organized by Anagnostopoulos, who said that naming the chair after a respected Greek figure would draw support from Greek-American who had not previously shown an interest in funding the chair.