Roscoe Pound Holds Last Class at University Today, Will Retire July 1

Roscoe Pound will meet his last class at the University today.

More than 35 years of association with students at Harvard will come to an end when his Law School class in Jurisprudence presents a parting gift and applauds the 76-year old University Professor as he leave the classroom for the last time. His retirement will become effective July 1.

"In our time in this country in the field of legal philosophy, one alpine peak has appeared above the surrounding landscape," said Albert Kourek, professor emeritus at Northwestern. "This is Roscoe Pound."

Dean of the Law School here for 20 years, Professor Pound gained his reputation for the philosophy of "sociological jurisprudence" which he conceived and pioneered Law was for him no pattern of rules. His new attitude, now firmly established in legal thinking, viewed the law as "a way of living together by actual human beings."

Legal Giant

One of the giants of legal philosophy, Professor Pound has received the honorary Doctors of Laws from the nation's universities better than 14 times but has yet to acquire the LL.B. in course.

Botany was his field when he took his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in his native Nebraska. He graduated when only a scant 17 years of age.

The following year saw young Pound at the Harvard Law School taking the first year courses and auditing as many others as he could sit in on.

One of the School's top men at the time, John C. Gray; chanced upon the Nebraskan in the library one afternoon, poring over Mackensie's Roman Law. Gray stopped and advised, "Don't read that." He picked up a copy of the then recently published 1889 edition of Sohar's. Institute and offered it to Pound as more profitable study. Twenty years later Gray sat in his seminar on Roman Law.

Schedule is Heavy

Last fall, Professor Pound carried nine hours of teaching on his weekly schedule. He grades all term papers and examinations himself, maintaining "I do not think it is fair to my students to have assistants do the work."

Professor, Pound has always been a strong man and for years could run a five minute mile. When he lived in Belmont, he walked six miles a day to Cambridge, and he became famous among his neighbors for going coatless in subzero weather.

When Professor Pound missed the first meeting of his undergraduate Government 43 course this term, it was the second time in his teaching career that he did not keep an appointment. He had merely failed to note it on his calendar amid the confusion of College and Law School opening dates.

At the final-meeting of his undergraduate students before the reading period, the class presented him a silver bowl inscribed: "To Dean Pound with great devotion and esteem from the members of his last class in Government 43 in Harvard College."