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Yale's Charles William Hendel, 68, topflight philosopher, who took over the Yale department 19 years ago and made it one of the nation's most renowned. Pennsylvanian Hendel hurried to Princeton in 1909 on the strength of what he had read about Woodrow Wilson's preceptorial system, graduated No. 1 in his class. After getting his Ph.D. there, he taught philosophy at Williams, Princeton, McGill University, won a reputation in Britain for a book on Hume and in France for one on Rousseau. Yale hired him in 1940 as Clark professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics. His main job: revamping the department, which then taught 469 undergraduates. Applying Wilsonian methods, Hendel set up Yale's seminar system, brought in top-ranking scholars (e.g., Paul Weiss), created a heady new atmosphere. This year one-third (1,249 students) of all Yale undergraduates studied philosophy, along with 82 graduate students culled from applicants throughout the world. Hendel will now prepare 20 lectures on theology for delivery in 1962 and 1963 at the University of Glasgow, under appointment to the famed Gifford Lectures (among previous American appointees: William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey). Said Harvard's Paul Tillich recently of what Hendel wrought at Yale: "I know of no better philosophy department in the country."
Columbia's gentle, legendary Mark Van Doren, 65, whose thousands of never-the-same students in 39 years included Men of Letters Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling, Philosopher Mortimer Adler, Literary Gadfly Clifton Fadiman, Trappist Priest Thomas Merton, his own quiz-whiz son Charles. Van Doren is a Renaissance man out of Hope, Ill.—a Pulitzer prizewinning poet (Collected Poems, 1939), literary critic (The Nation), editor (Anthology of World Poetry), author of some 35 books. Not least was he a teacher, whose eclectic English 38 (Homer, the Bible, Kafka, Dante, Cervantes) was the most deceptively affecting experience on Morningside Heights. No literary geologist, Teacher Van Doren was an unanalytic celebrator of feeling, who could re-create a brief Homeric allusion to an ancient sight, sound or smell with a quiet anecdote of his own that suddenly exploded the passage into life. He lived what he read aloud and he was not above a genuine tear; Columbia may not see his like again for many a year. Retiring to his Connecticut farm, he will try his hand again at the lucid poetry that some compare to Frost and others to Dryden (his own standards: "Clarity, movement, vigor, plainness"). But first will come his first play, The Last Days of Lincoln, now being polished for Broadway next season. As Humorist James Thurber put it, describing him not long ago, Mark Van Doren is "so many men that I have to open my door and my windows when he visits me in order to let all of him in."
* Christian Bishop of Nyssa (372) in the Roman province of Cappadocia. St. Gregory was a poor administrator but a revered theologian and ecumenical influence, is known as one of the four great fathers of the Eastern Church.