Education: Goodbye, Messrs. Chips

Each year, U.S. colleges and universities must say goodbye to many a famed and favorite figure. Among those retiring in 1958:

Indiana University's slight, white-haired Kenneth Powers Williams, 70, who began teaching mathematics at Indiana in 1909, since 1944 has found a second field of excellence—writing Civil War history. That year he decided to follow an old interest, write a short book on the war's last year. Commencing work at 6 a.m., teaching classes in an authoritative, no-nonsense fashion in the afternoon and writing more history at night, Mathematician-Historian Williams began to produce something...