Universities Attempt Raid Of Math Dept.

A personnel raid involving offers for positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the Rockefeller Institute has hit the Department of Mathematics in the past year. As yet no professors have left but it is conceivable that two might still do so.

The two are Raoul Bott, who has been contacted by Princeton and George W. Mackey who has received an offer from Penn.

Also, it was only a week ago that another full professor, Andrew M. Gleason, made a final decision to reject a position at Rockefeller Institute. Gleason said yesterday that the question of salary had never been discussed, but that he assumed Rockefeller Institute would have paid him more than Harvard, since the salary scale at the Institute is generally higher.

There is no instruction of undergraduates at Rockefeller Institute, and Gleason pointed to this lack as one concrete reason he preferred to stay at Harvard. But he said that Rockefeller Institute has a wider degree of interdisciplinary contact in the natural sciences than he had found at Harvard.

Mackey has exchanged several letters with Richard D. Brauer, chairman of the Harvard Mathematics Department, since the Penn contact. Brauer said yesterday that Mackey and Bott had both decided to spend next year at the University, and that he was virtually certain Mackey would remain permanently.

Brauer said he had just received a letter from Bott indicating Bott will probably stay. He did note, however, that since Bott is a topologist, and since Princeton has several other topologists with whom he could work, Bott might well find the Princeton offer attractive.