Goodbye, Messrs. Chips

Each year, U.S. colleges and universities must say goodbye to famed, favorite and aging teachers. But this year the farewells will be a lot less numerous than usual. Reason: since professors have just come under social security coverage, many campuses are keeping their 65-year-olds on long enough for them to qualify for federal pensions. Among those who did retire last week, pensions or no:

The University of California's IRA B. CROSS, 70, who in the last 37 years has driven and inspired more than 50,000 students to mastering their basic economics. A fierce and spluttery lecturer, "the Doc" was also a pushover for bad puns ("The man who invented spaghetti used the noodle"), an authority on "aids to lazy gardening," the sworn enemy of coeds who powdered their noses in class and of graduate students who married girls without money ("I'm sorry for you, I'm sorry for you").

Harvard's husky ANDRE MORIZE, 66, dean of French literature professors in the U.S. In 1917, scholarly Andre Morize (he published the first critical edition of Candide) arrived at Harvard as a dashing French lieutenant assigned to teach trench warfare to ROTC students, stayed on to make a career of teaching literature. With time out only to serve as a director in France's commissariat of information early in World War II ("You're pure," said Commissioner Jean Giraudoux, who appointed him. "You don't know anybody"), "Le Beau Andre" has remained at Harvard ever since--an elegantly tailored, youthful-looking six-footer who has never been known to deviate from his own advice: "You've got to give yourself completely when teaching--in class, out of class, every moment."

The University of Pennsylvania's OWEN J. ROBERTS, 76, who in 1948 became the first U.S. Supreme Court Justice ever to serve as dean of a law school after leaving the bench. A man with a phenomenal memory and a mind crammed with courtroom lore, he was a patient, polite professor ("Well, that's close to it. .." he would say when a student gave a wrong answer), in four years did more to enhance the national prestige of the law school than any other dean before him.

Columbia Teachers College's HAROLD RUGG, 65, one of the top apostles of the "society-centered" and "child-centered" school. In his famed social science textbooks (more than 2,000,000 copies), Harold Rugg slashed away subject barriers, tried to revolutionize social science teaching in the schools by combining history, geography, civics, economics into a "total portrait." His blunt, New-Dealing criticisms of U.S. history, past & present, raised storms of protest in the '30s and early '40s, made Author Rugg ("To keep issues out of the school is to keep life out of it") one of the most controversial teachers of his time.

The University of Chicago's FRANK HYNEMAN KNIGHT, 65, onetime Illinois farm boy who became the nation's leading economist of the orthodox, classical school. Always seated in class ("You know how I happened to leave the farm? Well, it was my feet"), he acidly criticized everything from Lord Keynes to the stock market, gave such brilliant but rambling lectures that one student was moved to remark: "Two-thirds of the people in his classes never know what he's talking about, and one-third doesn't know two-thirds of the time. But the remaining one-third of the time makes up for all the rest."

The University of Chicago's WILLIAM F. OGBURN, 64, the top social statistician in the U.S., onetime director of research for President Hoover's Committee on Social Trends. In 40 years of teaching and research, Sociologist Ogburn has delved deep into everything from living costs to population movements and the tyranny of the machine. His plans after retiring: "I want to spend three months seeing every athletic event in Chicago, then I want to go to all the movies, then I would like to spend several years traveling--I haven't seen the Orient yet--and I want to look at all the national parks, and I want to see some swamps. Then I want to write ..."

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