Education: Heavyweight Champion

When he took over Indiana University in 1937, fun-loving Herman B (for nothing, and please no period) Wells alarmed hidebound Hoosiers with his penchant for dressing up in a coonskin coat and roaring around Bloomington in a bright blue touring car with the top down. For all his bulk (228 Ibs. at 5 ft. 7 in.), the nation's youngest (then 35) president of a state university looked like a lightweight. Happily, the pessimists were dead wrong. When he stepped down last week at 60—to be replaced by Army Secretary Elvis Stahr Jr.—"Hermie" Wells was known throughout U.S. campuses not only...