All over the U.S., veteran college and university professors were saying goodbye and climbing down from their lecture platformsthis time for keeps. Six topflight teachers whose retirements (in July or September) were announced last week:
¶ Princeton's Christian Gauss, 68, judicious, quizzical, pince-nezed professor of modern languages, longtime Dean of the College. Gauss and three others, all retiring now, are the last of President Woodrow Wilson's 47 preceptors, appointed in 1905. Another: Edward Samuel Corwin, 68, professor of jurisprudence, historian of the Constitution and the Court, vigorous defender of Roosevelt's 1937 court-packing plan.
¶ Harvard's Ralph Barton Perry, 70, Pulitzer Prizewinning...