Purcell, Levin Appointed To Two New Professorships

Two professors, both of whom have been on the faculty for more than 20 years, were appointed to fill newly-created professorships this week.

Edward M. Purcell, Noble prize winner in physics, will be the first Gerhard Gade University Professor, increasing the ranks of university professors to seven. Harry T. Levin '33 will assume on July 1 the Irving Babbitt Professorship of Comparative Literature, a new chair named after the literary critic and French professor who taught Levin while at College.

Purcell won the Nobel Prize in 1952 for his work in nuclear magnetic resonance, a method for the accurate measurement of certain nuclear properties. Since 1957, he has served as a member of President Eisenhower's Scientific Advisory Committee. Purcell has been on the faculty since 1938, and became a professor in 1949.

The Gade University Professorship was made possible by a gift in the will of the late Gerhard Gade '21, a career Foreign Service officer.

Levin holds the post of professor of English and Comparative Literature and chairman of the Division of Modern Languages, and has been on the faculty since 1939.

The chair honoring Babbitt was proposed by President Pusey, who also studied under him while in College. Babbitt taught in the field of French literature from 1894 until 1933 and introduced the comparative study of literatures to Harvard. One of his most important critical works was Rousseau and Romanticism.