Kistiakowsky Will Replace Killian As Science Adviser to President

The White House announced yesterday the appointment of George B. Kistiakowsky, Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry and former Chairman of the Department, as Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology.

Although he would not comment specifically on the problems he would deal with, Kistiakowsky said that "my office will strive to mobilize for the President the best objective scientific and engineering advice." One of the original members of the President's Science Advisory Committee, Kistiakowsky will take office in mid-July, replacing James R. Killian, Jr.

Killian stated only that he was resigning for "compelling personal reasons," about which the President has had "warm understanding." It had been reported erroneously yesterday that Killian would return to the presidency of M.I.T., and there was speculation that he had been asked to resign.

To Become Chairman of Corporation

The M.I.T. Public Relations Office said, however, that Killian was resigning to devote full time to his new post of Chairman of the Corporation. When Killian was elected to the position last December, former Chairman Vannevar Bush emphasibed the "urgent need of Dr. Killian to assume his new duties at the earliest possible date."

Kistiakowsky, a native of Kiev, Russia, will get a year's leave of absence from the University next year. Ever since he was appointed, in 1944, chief of the division of the Manhattan Project charged with the development of a detonation device for the atomic bomb, he has "never stopped working for the government," he remarked yesterday.

Kistiakowsky was a member of the United States delegation to technical talks with Russia at the 1958 Geneva Conference on ways of reducing the danger of surprise nuclear attack. From 1953 to 1958, he was a member of the ballistic missiles advisory committee of the Air Force and Defense Department.