Wilder, Author, Named Next Norton Professor

Thornton Wilder, playwright and author, will be the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at the University during 1950-51. He follows Paul Hindemith, current holder of the Norton Chair.

Each appointee for this chair has a one year tenure of office, during which time he delivers six or more public lectures. Wilder will live in Dunster House while holding his professorship.

Among earlier Norton Professors have been poets T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost, art historian Erwin Panofsky, and composer Igor Stravinsky.

Wilder, a native of Madison, Wisconsin, is the author of "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," "The Angel that Troubled the Waters," "The Long Christmas Dinner," "Our Town," "The Skin of Our Teeth," and "The Ides of March."

Yale Graduate

A graduate of Yale in 1920, Wilder studied at the American Academy in Rome and received his M.A. from Princeton. He has taught at the Lawrenceville School and the University of Chicago, and belongs to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

During World War II, Wilder was a Colonel in the Air Force Intelligence and received the Order of the British Empire and other decorations.

Hindemith, the present chair-holder, is Battell Professor of the Theory of Music at Yale University. During the past 13 years he has been touring the United States giving concerts of his own works and performing with most of the leading American symphony orchestras.

He has written several books on the theory of music as well as numerous compositions for all combinations of voices and instruments. He will give a concert of his own works next month at Sanders Theatre.