They speak in terms of combinations-those who know: a scholar, innovator, financier, liberal, (not too liberal), acceptable to students, tolerable to alumni.

"Where are they going to find someone like that?" asked a recent alumnus. "The best they can hope for is a man with a mind small enough to take the job and an ego large enough to think he can do it."

Many have suggested the next president of Harvard might be found in Princeton: Carl Kaysen, former professor of Economics here and now head of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. "I'm crazy," Kaysen says, "but I'm not that crazy."

And so the field narrows by one.

There are more vacancies in college presidencies this year than enlistment openings at the Cambridge Army recruitment center. Columbia only filled its presidency this summer after nearly two years of looking. Asked who had turned it down, one student replied, who didn't? Stanford is still searching for its perfect combination, as are Boston University, M.I.T., Brandeis, even Suffolk University, just to mention the schools in the Boston area.

Becoming a college president today is like signing on to administer the Munich pact in 1939. With its financial base (government and foundation grants) crumbling, Harvard is committed already to several new and costly projects (The Afro-American Research Institute, merger with Radcliffe, Gund Hall, and the new science center). The Faculty is divided and restless. The students, united and angry.

The next president will have to be not only qualified (by the Corporation's criteria) but also flexible, like able, innovative, brash, and yes, more than a little crazy.

Five names, indicative of the types of men as well as possibly the men the Corporation will be choosing among, come to mind: Derek C. Bok, 40, dean of the Harvard Law School:

You can't really say whether Bok has been successful at the Law School. You can say he's endured, which is no small feat.

Bok, a popular young professor on the Law School Faculty, was named dean two and a half years ago when Erwin H. Griswold resigned to become U.S. Solicitor General. Griswold ran the traditionally close-knit Law School with an iron hand and escaped from the job just before students mounted a series of campaigns against many of the older traditions. Bok inherited both the student dissatisfaction and a tradition-minded conservative faculty, and he has spent the better part of his term reconciling the two.

Skeptical faculty members who two years ago thought Bok was too young for the deanship now praise his performance. He has succeeded in changing one of the most staid laws schoolsin the country with grade reforms and more relevant courses, and still kept adamant opponents of both from leaving.

"These have been pretty rugged years for the Law School," one professor said. "You have to give credit to Bok for making it through without having the Law School blow."

A graduate of Stanford, Bok studied for his Law degree at Harvard where he became a friend and somewhat protege to Kingman Brewster, then a professor at the Law School. As a law professor and dean Bok has almost coincidentally developed the right friends in the right places: Brewster, Archibald Cox and John Dunlop (with whom he co-authored books), professors in the Kennedy School of Government and Economics Department where he was an associate, and most important Overseers and Corporation members-many of whom take a special interest and pride in the Law School as alumni.

HIS POPULARITY among faculty and alumni has not come at the expense of students. He is probably more popular with his own students than any other faculty member in the University. To Bok's credit, his popularity derives primarily from stands on controversial issues.

An active liberal, Bok took a major role in the campaign to have G. Harrold Carswell defeated in the Senate last year, flying down to Washington to testify against the man.