His citation describes him as "a tireless opponent of poverty and injustice, a stalwart Christian leader offering life and hope to the downtrodden and defeated."

Chien-Shiung Wu, the second of this year's female honorary degree recipients, received a Doctor of Science degree. The Michael Pupit. Professor of Physics at Columbia University, Wu has done intensive study in the fields of nuclear forces and structure.

She is best known in the scientific world for her experimental demonstration of a nuclear theory--the non-conservation of parity in beta decay--suggested by two Nobel prize-winners, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang.

Wu was born in Liu Ho, China, and studied at the Central University of Nanking, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1936. The same year, she came to the United States to do graduate work at the University of California under Ernest O. Laurence, who won the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the cyclotron.

The citation on her degree reads: "A resourceful experimentalist whose brilliant research has fundamentally altered scientific concepts of the structure of matter."

Clifford Geertz, who received a Doctor of Laws, is a social anthropologist and a member of the faculty of the School of Social Science of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton,

Geertz is best known his studies regarding changing religious attitudes and habits among the Islamic peoples of Morrocco and Indonesia, where he served as a Ford Foundation consultant. He recently published a book entitled Islam Observed.

He received an A.B. from Antioch in 1950 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1956, and has taught at Harvard, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago.

Geertz's citation reads: "A deserving scholar who with masterly skill probes ancient societies for new light on the relation of religious belief to human behavior."

The following seven people received honorary degrees at the 323rd Commencement exercises in Tercentenary Theater today:

The Most Rev. Helder Camara, Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil, and social activist, a Doctor of Laws.

Ralph Ellison, prizewinning novelist, a Doctor of Letters.

Clifford Geertz, social anthropologist, a Doctor of Laws.

Mstislav Rostropovich, world-renowned Russian cellist, a Doctor of Music.

Beverly Sills, American prima diva, a Doctor of Music.

Jerome B. Wiesner, president of MIT, a Doctor of Laws.

Chien-Shiung Wu, experimental nuclear physicist, a Doctor of Science.