In a year when University administrators fretted over dwindling federal assistance and over the hazards of Harvard's becoming a minority shareholder in a genetic-engineering firm (see "Setbacks," below), a $50-million research grant to the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) must have seemed like a gift from heaven. In fact, the largest private research grant ever presented to a university came from West Germany.

Hoechst A.G. of Frankfurt, an international chemical firm, is giving MGH the money over the next ten years so that the hospital can establish a new department of molecular biology and support basic research in that field. In exchange for the grant, Hoechst will have the right to profit from the research results before other companies gain access to the findings and to obtain exclusive licenses to develop to develop commercial products using the research results. MGH, however, will own any patents developed under the agreement.

To allay fears that academic freedom might be compromised by the agreement. MGH officials arranged for safeguards, including a guarantee that investigators in the new molecular biology department be able to choose their own research projects and that they have freedom to control the time and place for announcing their findings to the public, without interference from Hoechst. "Research will be sponsored, but not directed by the company," Dr. Charles A. Sanders, director of MGH. assured.

The Fogg Museum also received some help from abroad this year in the form of a design for a new $5.9-million extension to be built on the site of Allston Burr Hall. British architect James Stirling unveiled plans for the adjunct in April, likening his creation to a car battery. "It's incredibly dense," he explained.

"Sometimes while working on it, I've had the feeling it's going to sink into the ground." Construction of the building will begin this summer. When it opens in 1983 it will house galleries and offices for the Fogg's departments of ancient, Oriental, and Near Eastern art, as well as a 300-seat lecture hall in the basement.

Unlike the Fogge extension, the Medical Area Total Energy Plant (MATEP) has been standing for quite some time, although it is still not fully operational. The giant plant moved closer this year to providing the energy it was designed to produce when Gov. Edward J. King requested that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forego investigation of MATEP's environmental impact, a process mandated by the Clean Air Act, because MATEP is technically a non-profit organization and therefore exempt from the review regulation. The EPA last month decided in favor of the exemption.