Nine professors from the University of Leningrad may be the first to visit Harvard under a Faculty-exchange program proposed nearly three years ago, according to Edward L. Pattullo, assistant dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Harvard, in return, is sending two professors to Russia.

Travelling to the Soviet Union in connection with the Lacey-Zarubin agreement will be Kenneth T. Bainbridge, professor of Physics, and Paul D. Bartlett, Erving Professor of Chemistry.

Bainbridge, a nuclear physicist noted for his work on the mass spectroscope, will leave in April for two weeks at Leningrad. Director of the Alamogordo Atomic Bomb Test (1945), he will lecture and conduct seminars on mass spectrometry. Bartlett has done research in kinetics and the mechanism of organic reactions.

Regretting the fact that the University of Leningrad chose only scientists to visit the Soviet Union, Pattullo hopes that the Russians will follow Harvard's example of inviting professors from the humanities and the social sciences. The expected arrival of the Russians, he said, indicates a change in spirit by the Soviets, perhaps prompted by a desire for better relations with the new Kennedy administration.

Although the University has received no official word from Leningrad, Pattullo assumes that all nine invited faculty members will arrive some time during the Spring Term.

Three other American universities, Columbia, Indiana, and Yale, are participating in the program with their "sister institutions," Moscow, Tashkent, Kiev.

Up to this time only two Harvard professors have taken part in the exchange. Last May, Seymour Slive, professor of Fine Arts, lectured on seventeenth century Dutch painting at Leningrad; and in December, Richard M. Goody, professor of Meteorology, spent 20 days at Moscow and Leningrad Universities.

Columbia University has announced that four of its professors will lecture at the University of Moscow and an equal number of Russians will visit the Columbia campus later this year in the first exchange outside of Harvard. The University of California (Berkeley) also wants to participate in the program, which may be extended to other colleges.