John J. Conway, Master of Leverett House, will leave the University at the end of the present academic year.

Conway plans to return to his native Canada, after spending several months writing in England. His resignation was tendered only within the past few weeks, and it came as a complete surprise to the University Administration.

The important factor in Conway's decision was his feelings for Canada. Conway, who has been at Harvard since 1945, pointed out yesterday that he had come to the University "expecting to stay only a year." He also mentioned that he had "seriously considered" leaving Cambridge in 1957, when he completed a five-year term as Allston Burr Senior Tutor of Eliot House.

Offered Leverett Mastership

But toward the close of his term as Senior Tutor, Conway was offered the Mastership of Leverett House, then one the less popular Houses in the College. The opportunities and challenges presented by this offer, Conway felt, were too great to be turned down. Under his Mastership, Leverett's physical plant has been vastly improved, and the activities program sponsored by the House has been strengthened.

Before coming to Harvard, Conway worked as a lawyer in Vancouver and compiled a distinguished war record with the Seaforth Highlanders, a division of the Canadian Army.

His original reason for entering the University was to study the history of the British Commonwealth. He received a Ph.D. in 1949, became an instructor in History in 1951 and an assistant professor in 1954. He was appointed to a lectureship in 1959, after he had been Master of Leverett for two years.

While a graduate student, Conway won the University's Jay Prize, given annually for the best work on British or American institutions. He won the prize for his doctoral dissertation on the group of pre-World War I Englishmen who first shaped the idea of the modern Commonwealth.