The Case of Professor Pancho

J. Frank Dobie is a maverick and a Texan. He can quote Wordsworth or Shelley at length—but he is also a he-man who once ran a 250,000-acre ranch. At the University of Texas, where he has taught for 28 years, Dobie likes to be called Professor Pancho. His lecture preambles—"Now, I'll tell you a little story of Liver-Eating Johnson . . ."—have delighted thousands of students. He refused to move into the new skyscraperish university tower. "It looks like a toothpick in a pie," he said, and opened an office in the oldest building on the campus.

There, surrounded by steer...