Thomas Lamont '21 Dies, Was Corporation Fellow

Thomas S. Lamont '21, a member of the Harvard Corporation, died yesterday morning following open-heart surgery at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. He was 68 years old.

Since 1952, Lamont served on the seven-man Corporation, which holds the deeds to all University land and must approve the budgets of the College and all the graduate schools. From 1945 until his election as a Fellow, he was a member of the Board of Overseers.

Lamont came from a family that had already established a tradition of service to Harvard. His father helped finance the main undergraduate library, and members of the family established the Florence Corliss Lamont Professorship of Divinity in memory of Lamont's mother in 1956.

Lamont himself donated collections of books and manuscripts to the University library, including the papers of his father, Thomas W. Lamont '98, and an extensive family correspondence with John Masefield, the British poet. He was vice-chairman for the $82.5-million Program for Harvard College.

Lamont was vice-chairman of the Board of Directors of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company until 1964, and served as a director of various other corporations.

In 1965 he and 12 other men were charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with withholding information about a rich ore strike by the Texas Gulf Sulfur Company until they or their business associates bought stock in the company.

A director of Texas Gulf Sulfur, Lamont, who was the only one of the 13 who did not profit personally, was accused of giving information about the discovery to Morgan Guaranty Trust, which bought 8000 shares for its clients. He was acquitted of the charges this summer.

Lamont is survived by his wife, the former Elinor B. Miner; two sons, Edward '48 and Lansing '52; a daughter, Mrs. Andrew (Elinor Branscombe) Anderson-Bell; and two brothers, Austin '27 and Corliss '24.