Kingman Brewster, Jr., was officially named the seventeenth president of Yale University by a vote of the Yale Corporation Saturday morning. The announcement ended a five-month search for a successor to A. Whitney Griswold, who died on April 19.

A former professor at the Harvard Law School, Brewster had been serving as acting president since Griswold's death. He had been Provost of Yale since 1960.

An editorial in the Yale Daily News applauded the selection of Brewster, "a man of exceptional and varied talents, well suited to lead a changing University. Mr. Brewster should become one of Yale's great presidents."

He had been considered the leading candidate for the presidency of Yale since Griswold's death, but as the Corporation took more and more time in its search for a new president, observers began to speculate that Brewster had also lost support. When he refused to allow Alabama's Gov. George Wallace to appear at Yale, then reversed himself and announced that he would permit Wallace to speak.

President Pusey said last night that "everybody at Harvard who knows Kingman Brewster thinks him very able. I am confident he will do an excellent job as Yale's President, and I am looking forward to working with him."

Several Yale graduates with Harvard connections had been considered candidates for the Yale presidency. McGeorge Bundy, former Dean of the Faculty and now special assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, who was considered a leading candidate announced publicly that he was not available. Bundy was reliably reported to have favored Brewster for the post.

Zeph Stewart, professor of Greek and Latin and Master of Lowell, was considered "the strongest" candidate after Brewster, according to the New York Times.

Brewster was graduated from Yale in 1941; he was chairman of the Yale Daily News while in the college. After moving with the government for a time, he studied at the Harvard Law School from 1945 to 1946 .

After ten years on the faculty, and seven as a full professor of Law, Brewster became provost at Yale in 1960 at the request of his personal friend, President Griswold.