Heavyweight Champion

When he took over Indiana University in 1937, fun-loving Herman B (for nothing, and please no period) Wells alarmed hidebound Hoosiers with his penchant for dressing up in a coonskin coat and roaring around Bloomington in a bright blue touring car with the top down. For all his bulk (228 Ibs. at 5 ft. 7 in.), the nation's youngest (then 35) president of a state university looked like a lightweight. Happily, the pessimists were dead wrong. When he stepped down last week at 60--to be replaced by Army Secretary Elvis Stahr Jr.--"Hermie" Wells was known throughout U.S. campuses not only as the man who remade Indiana University but also as just about the best old-pro prexy in the business.

Son of two schoolteachers in Jamestown, Ind., and dean of Indiana's School of Business Administration before he moved up to the presidency. Economist Wells proved to be a master at charming cash out of state legislators, and he used it to buy academic quality. Up surged the English department, the music and medi cal schools. The faculty blossomed with top scholars: Heart Surgeon Harris B. Shumacker Jr., Nobel-Prizewinning Geneticist Hermann J. Muller and the late Sexologist Alfred C. Kinsey, whose scholarship Wrells stoutly defended when Kin sey first began to publicize his findings.

Indiana's plant has quadrupled under Wells, enrollment has quintupled to 25.000. the university's vast research pro gram spans everything from nuclear cloud chambers to training teachers in Thai land. Wells broke down racial barriers at Indiana, quietly opened dormitories and the swimming pool to Negroes (in 1959, Miss Indiana University was a Negro). Not least. Wells in 1956 snagged Drug Manufacturer Josiah Kirby Lilly's collection of 20.000 first editions and thou sands of manuscripts, which made Indiana one of the nation's leading rare-book centers. Bachelor Wells, lover of antiques and fine food, has gained not only 50 Ibs. or so in his 25-year regime but also heavy respect as an academic statesman.

Wells now takes over the Indiana University Foundation, which finances research and handles private gifts. He leaves a rich heritage to Kentucky-born President Stahr, 46, lawyer and Rhodes scholar, who had the highest academic average in the history of the University of Kentucky, later taught law at Kentucky, became vice chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh and the youngest president (1959-61) in the history of the University of West Virginia.

Less successful were Stahr's 15 months at the Pentagon, where his academic personality failed to mesh with hardware-oriented Defense Secretary Robert S. Mc-Namara. Stahr once admitted that he did not know a battle group from a battalion, and blame for foul-ups in last year's call-up of Army reservists landed on his desk. He should be happier at Indiana, where his talents are more suitable.

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