After Visit to Texas A&M, Glashow Still Weighing Move

Home from a four-day trip to Texas A&M University, where officials are hoping to lure him away from Harvard, Higgins Professor of Chemistry Sheldon Glashow said yesterday that he found the institution "very impressive and very upwardly mobile." But he added, "I certainly don't have any plans to leave Harvard for the moment."

The Nobel-prize winning theorist returned Friday from the College Station, Texas university, where he gave a seminar for the physics department, met with the president, and looked at houses for sale in the area.

Glashow said Texas A&M officials have not made him a formal offer yet, but he added, "They've made it clear that such an offer would be available if I wished to sit down and discuss money."

Glashow explained that he has not yet initiated such a discussion because he is not sure he wants to leave Harvard.

In an interview last month, Glashow indicated that Texas A&M had tentatively offered him a financial package that would equal the richest in any American university. That salary is currently earned by Texas A&M's football coach Jackie Sherrill, whose contract reportedly gives him $1.6 million in money and perquisites over seven years.

"In informal discussions, [Texas A&M officials] indicated they would probably match those arrangements," Glashow said in October. "Apparently certain circles didn't see that there should be different valuations of physicists and football caoches," he added.

When a scholar agrees to give a seminar at another university, it is generally an indication that he is encouraging the institutions overtures. Another clear sign of interest in Texas A&M is that he is weighing the possibility of spending his 1983-84 sabbatical leave there.

"We certainly discussed that," Glashow said yesterday of the possibility of a sabbatical in Texas. "I would do that if they and I thought it would be useful step toward strengthening the department.

He added, "How useful I would find it depends on what plaris I have for Leaving Harvard."

Texas A&M president Frank E. Vandiver yesterday described his conversation with Glashow as informed and said, I was hoping he was interested in the university but I wasn't trying to put the hard sell on him."

Poker Face

Asked what he thought Glashow's response to Texas A&M was, Vandiver said, "Mr. Glashow is a very genial, amiable, cosmopolitan gentleman and he only gives away what he wants to give away."

The university's discussions with Glashow are part of a broad effort to build up its faculty, Vandiver said. "Improving the faculty is our highest priority, "he explained.

Vandiver called comparisons with sherrill's salary "amusing." "We've been engaged in trying to hire professors with large Inducements long before we hired Jackie Sherrill." he said.

The university's ability to offer such high salaries stems from its willing to dip into its roughly $600 million endowment, most of which comes from oil revenues, vandiver said.

Glashow said a major factor in deciding whether to leave Harvard is the effect of a move on his family. His wife, a writer, would be able to being her work to Texas, but a move would probably be disruptive for his four children, ages seven to 15, he said.

The entire Glashow family will probably spend a week in College Park during the children's winter vacation, the physicist said