Star System

Harvard and the University of Chicago last week could thank a geographer-geologist from Indiana University for calling the country's attention to the size and importance of their respective staffs of research scientists.

Professor Stephen Sargent Visher thumbed patiently through three editions of a fat volume in which topflight science men were starred by asterisks. American Men of Science was launched nearly three decades ago with a $1,000 grant from the Carnegie Institution. Through five editions it has been edited by Dr. James McKeen Cattell, now 73, himself a starred psychologist. But Dr. Cattell awards no star either to himself or to others. From the beginning starred scientists have been chosen by vote of men of standing in their respective fields. For the latest edition 250 were selected from some 20,000 candidates.*

In the University of Chicago Magazine last week, Surveyor Visher (no star) ranked U. S. universities according to the number of faculty members among 851 star-winners since 1921:

Harvard 58 Pennsylvania 21

Chicago 41 Stanford 20

California 31 Wisconsin 15

Columbia 29 Washington U. (St. Louis) 14

Yale 28

Michigan 27 Ohio State 12

Johns Hopkins 26 M. I. T 12

Cornell 23 Caltech 9

Minnesota 23 Iowa 7

Princeton 22 Northwestern 6

Illinois 21

Harvard and University of California have faculties of nearly 2,000; Columbia of more than 2,000. Small college men felt that Surveyor Visher should have taken faculty size into consideration as well as number of star-winners. If his ranking were recast on that basis, these ten universities would lead:

No. of star-winners (since 1921) per 100 faculty members (in 1933)

Chicago 7.07 Yale 3.57

Princeton 7.03 Stanford 3.48

Caltech 4.97 Michigan 3.47

Johns Hopkins 4.31 Harvard 3.28

Minnesota 3.97 Cornell 2.67

*Among them: Ernest Orlando Lawrence, University of California atom-smasher (TIME, July 3); Columbia's Harold Clayton Urey, discoverer of heavy hydrogen (TIME, July 3); Walter Edward Dandy, Johns Hopkins pathologist (TIME, Jan. 8); Otto Struve, University of Chicago astronomer (TIME, Jan. 8).

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