Frye Chosen First Iranian Professor

Richard N. Frye, associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies, will become the first Aga Khan Professor of Iranian at Harvard University.

Dean McGeorge Bundy announced yesterday that the Aga Khan Professorship, recently established by the Moslem religious leader of the Ismaili community, with the intention of "preserving and transmitting to future generations knowledge of the rich heritage of the Iranian past," will become effective on July 1.

The Aga Khan Professorship is the first chair established at Harvard by a foreigner since the Rumford Professorship of Physics was founded in 1819 by Benjamin Thompson.

Frye is a leading American authority on the history and language of Iran and has done research work there. During his travels he collected dialects, folk songs and dances of the central deserts on tape and film. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1939 and continued his Oriental studies at Princeton, Harvard, and the University of London.

Some of his many books on the culture of the Middle East include "Iran," a widely used textbook; an English translation of "The Mediaeval History of Bukhara"; "The Persian History of Nishapur"; and "The History of the Nation of Archers," which was written in collaboration with R. P. Blake.