This summer a team led by Associate Professor of Microbiology William A. Haseltine announced that it may have found a gene that is responsible for the disease, as well as certain kinds of cancer.

Haseltine and his associates figured out how a leukemia virus--known as HTLV-1--takes control and infects blood cells. They believe that a similar process is at work when HTLV-3 viruses--which is believed to be the cause of AIDS--attack cells. And they think that some genetic material in this family of viruses is the culprit.

But perhaps the most widely publicized scientific event of the summer was not a discovery but a saving. Harvard doctors used a new method of growing sheets of skin from tiny samples to save the lives of two young brothers, who suffered burns over almost all of their bodies in a freak accident.

Dr. Howard Green, chairman of the Physiology Department at the Medical School, has pioneered a method of growing a one-inch-square sample of skin and in three or four weeks cultivating enough new skin to cover an entire body.

The method proved a lifesaver to brothers Jamie and Glen Selby of Caspar, Wyo., who were burned after they playfully painted their bodies, tried to remove the paint with a solvent, and then came into contact with a flame.

Dr. G. Gregory Gallico, a plastic surgeon at the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, used skin grown in Green's laboratories to cover the burned bodies, gaining press attention from across the country.

Academic Departments

One of Harvard's smallest departments, the Celtic Department, completed a major turnover in personnel by hiring a specialist in Irish literature from University College Cork, Ireland.

Sean O'Coileain, a native speaker of Irish, will become the chairman of the only university department in the country devoted solely to Celtic languages and literatures.

The department's previous chairman, Robinson Professor of Celtic Languages and Literature Charles W. Dunn, retired in June. Another full professor, John V. Kelleher, has moved to part-time duties.

Meanwhile, the Department of Germanic Literatures and Languages broke a long hiring drought by tenuring a Smith College expert in modern German literature.

The appointment of Judith Ryan came after the department had received several turndowns of offers, as well as getting mired in some internal division over what kind of appointments to make. Ryan becomes the Faculty's 22nd woman tenured professor.

A Cornell German specialist, Sander L. Gilman, is still mulling over a University offer.

The Government Department was also a beehive of activity.

The biggest news was the announcement of an unusual tenure agreement concerning one of Harvard's most famous scholars, Shattuck Professor of Government James Q. Wilson.