Skinner, Volcker, 8 Others to Receive Degrees

President Bok this morning was scheduled to confer honorary degrees on nine men and a woman, including renowned psychologist B.F. Skinner and Nobel Laureate Andre Lwoff, the French biologist.

Paul A. Volcker, the Federal Reserve Board chairman, will also receive an honorary degree, which is traditionally conferred on the main Commencement speaker.

In addition, Bok will honor two recently departed Harvard administrators, retired Treasurer George Putnam Jr. '49 and former Divinity School Dean Krister Stendahl, and a current member of the Board of Overseers. Frank Stanton, the retired president of CBS Inc.

Sculptor Louise Nevelson; author and critic V.S. Pritchett; Japanese economist Shigeto Tsuru '35; and medical pharmacologist Sir John W. Black round out this year's list of honoraries, which is one less than last year's 11 honorands.

Harvard does not reveal or comment on the names of the honorands until Bok awards the degrees at the close of the morning exercises. The Crimson reported the names of the 10 recipients in yesterday's issue.

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B.F. Skinner, the 81-year-old Pierce Professor of Psychology Emeritus, is known as a radical behaviorist who rebelled against the hypothetical approach to the science of behavior. His experimental approach led to his development of what came to be known as the "Skinner Box," a controlled environment that allowed him to record behavioral patterns.

Skinner, who retired in 1974, is considered one of the most controversial figures in the field of psychology both for his experimental methods and for his insistence that psychology can be applied to a wide range of social problems, including education, linguistics, and social psychology.

Skinner first arrived at Harvard in 1928 where he was awarded an A. M. degree 1930 and his Ph.D in 1931. Avoiding the predominant trends in contemporary Harvard psychology. Skinner later wrote. "I was determined to become a scientific psychologist," according to a recent biography.

Dr. Audre M. Lwoff. the 83-year-old biologist, shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his DNA work. He won the award--with Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob--for his demonstration of lysogeny, a process in which the DNA of a virus becomes incorporated into a bacterial chromosome.

Lwoff, who was active in the French underground during World War II, after the war became a Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor and received a Medal of the Resistance.

He has headed the Department of Microbial Physiology at the Pasteut Institute since 1938, according to recent, published biographies.

Paul A. Volcker, the nation's chief central banker, is widely credited with reining in the rampant inflation of the late '70s and early '80s.

Appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and named to a second four-year term by President Reagan in 1983, the 6-ft., 8-in. financier holds the purse strings to America's money supply.

Volcker became the object of intense criticism when his tight money policy drove the last recession to greater depths, but the ensuing economic recovery delivered his vindication.

Although he generally refrains from speaking out on fiscal matters, Volcker has called for deep cuts in the federal budget deficit, which may provide the topic for his speech today. (For an in-depth profile of Volcker, see page A-5.)

George Putnam Jr. '49, who as treasurer held the title and responsibilities of a member of the Harvard Corporation, the University's seven-man governing board, served as Harvard's main financial administrator for 10 years until his retirement in 1984.

Putnam oversees the Putnam Family of Funds, a group of 19 different mutual funds with trusts valued in the billions. He has served on Putnam funds since 1951, the year he graduated from the Business School.

A biochemistry concentrator at Harvard, he played football on Eliot House's intramural team and was an editor of the Lampoon.

Krister Stendahl, who served as dean of the Divinity School for 11 years until 1979, left to become Bishop of Stockholm last fall at a time when Sweden's Evangelical Lutheran Church--one of the world's last remaining state-controlled churches--was experiencing a sharp drop in popularity Stendahl, who was Mellon Professor of Divinity at Harvard, holds what is considered the most visible church post in Sweden.

Stendahl, one of the world's foremost New Testament scholars, came to Harvard from Sweden in 1954 and became an American citizen in 1967.

Stendahl, who was ordained in the Church of Sweden, later became a member of the Lutheran Church in America He has worked in the Student Christian movement, and as a scholar has shown special concern for the impact of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls on New Testament scholarship. He is also renowned for his studies of the Gospel of St. Matthew.

Frank Stanton, a vocal defender of First Amendment rights, has played a key role in the development of radio and television since his appointment in 1946 as president and chief operating officer of CBS, a job he held for 25 years.

Stanton worked his way up the CBS ladder, but continued to devote time to the academic study of the media. From 1937 to 1940. Stanton was associate director of the Office of Radio Research at Princeton University. In 1940 he became a member of the advisory council of the Office of Radio Research at Columbia University.

In 1946, when he was 38, Stanton replaced CBS founder William S. Paley, who resigned the presidency of CBS to become chairman of the board.

During World War II, Stanton and a Columbia professor developed the Stanton-Lazarsfeld program analyzer, a small mechanical gadget that could measure listener reaction to programs, songs, and movies, according to a 1965 biography.

The 78-year-old Stanton is the only non-alumnus currently serving on the Harvard Board of Overseers--the alumni-controlled half of Harvard's Governing Boards--and is widely praised for his role in raising funds for the Kennedy School during the Harvard Campaign, which ended last December.

Stanton was instrumental in raising $22 million for the Kennedy School during the Campaign, $2 million more than expected. Stanton reportedly gave more than $1 million during the Campaign, making him one of the largest donors during the five-year $350 million fund drive.

President Bok this morning was scheduled to confer honorary degrees on:

Sir John W. Black, medical pharmacologist;

Dr. Andre M. Lwoff, biologist and Nobel Prize laureate;

Louise Nevelson, sculptor;

V.S. Pritchett, author and critic;

George Putnam Jr. '49, financier, former Harvard treasurer and Corporation fellow;

B.F. Skinner, Pierce Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Harvard;

Frank Stanton, former president of CBS Inc.;

Krister Stendahl, Bishop of Stockholm, former dean of the Harvard Divinity School;

Shigeto Tsuru '35, economist, professor, former president of Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo;

Paul A. Volcker, Federal Reserve Board chairman.

Stanton is currently ending a four-year stint as chairman of the Board of Overseers visiting committee on the Kennedy School. He also sits on the visiting committees of the Graduate School of Design and the Fogg Museum.

Stanton's name is affixed to the first endowed chair at the newly-formed Kennedy School Press, Politics, and Public Policy Center. The Stanton Professorship of the First Amendment, which is supported by a $1 million endowment, was created by grants from CBS Inc. and a variety of other donors, including ABC Inc. and RCA Inc.

An official said the Kennedy School has just formed a search committee to fill the chair.

Russian-born sculptor Louise Nevelson is known both for her earlier interior sculptures in painted wood and for her more recent outdoor sculptures in metal, one of which was unveiled Tuesday at a ceremony at the Law School.

Nevelson, who currently works in New York, is considered one of the foremost living sculptors. Her work, which is broadly categorized as surrealist, is represented in numerous permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Princeton University, and Brandeis University.

The 86-year-old Nevelson developed sculpture through processes that could have an unexpected power, not framed by conventions of human figures," Neil J. Levine, chairman of the Fine Arts Department, said this week.

V.S. Pritchett is best known for his short stories, but he been prominent as a writer of biographies, literary criticism, and other non-fiction work. In 1978, he ended his 50-year tenure as literary critic for the New Statesman, the English journal.

Pritchett's best-known novel is "Mr. Beluncle," first published in 1951, and his famous short stories include "The Fly in the Ointment," and "The Saint."

Shigeto Tsuru '35, who is in town for the 50th reunion of his undergraduate class, has for the past decade been editorial adviser of The Asa n Shimbun, a Tokyo-based newspaper with a circulation of close to eight million.

Tsuru, who after World War II served as vice-minister of the Japanese Economic Stabilisation Board, 'became president of Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University in 1972, a post he held until 1975.

Tsuru wrote in his Fiftieth Aniversary Report that he had been pressured four times within the last two decades to run as governor of Tokyo.

"Some of my American friends, including Ken Galbraith, suggested that I should run, but Masako, my wife, took a rather ambivalent position: that is, she would support my candidacy if she were not Mrs. Tsuru, implying that a need for divorce action in case of my running." Tsuru wrote in his report.

"Somehow, this story leaked, and Masako was subjected to a barrage of entreaties from political organizers, including a full two-hour telephone offensive in one stretch. I declined to run in any case," he added.

Tsuru is also considered a founder of the Japanese environmental movement.

Sir John W. Black, who will turn 61 next week, has until recently been director of the Therapeutic Research at the Wellcome Research laboratories in Kent England. He headed the Department of Pharmacology at University College. London, from 1973 to 1977, and has taught physiology and pharmacology at numerous universities.

Black is best known for his discovery of two important classes of therapeutic drugs, one of which is used to treat a side range of heart disorders and another which is used to treat pepticulcers.

Black currently heads a research unit at King's College Medical School in London.