Strengths: Currently a professor at Harvard. Respected scientist and expert on atmospheric matters. Well- known in Washington.

Weaknesses: No Harvard degree. Foreign-born.

Personal: Born May 18, 1939 in Shercock, Ireland. Married, two children.

Trivia: Plays a mean game of tennis. professors about his committment to undergraduate education.

"Does the man even know how to spell undergraduate?" asked one senior professor.

The search committee has received at least one negative response to Leder's candidacy, from a resident of his home town of Brookline.

Some Brookline residents have criticized Leader for his role as founding director of the Brookline Environmental Protection Association, which opposes the town's plans to build a municipal garage in his well-to-do suburban neighborhood.

Leder's detractors insist that repeated studies have concluded the garage proposal to be environmentally sound. They charge that Leder's motives are strictly personal.

"I hope that Harvard will not choose as its president someone so ready to use the very selfish argument 'not in my backyard,'" wrote John Bassett '60 in a letter to the committee.

If Leder is a controversial figure in the politics of Brookline, Feldstein has been lightning rod of criticism in national politics.

While a leading economic adviser during the Reagan presidency, Feldstein took the unusual route of airing his disagreements with the administration's policy decisions publicly. Past federal economic advisers have generally refrained from open criticism of the president's policies.

As a result, political clashes between Feldstein and other members of the Reagan Administration frequently made front page news.

Despite the political infighting, some still see Feldstein as tied to the Reagan administration. And although observers say his conservative politics will not hurt his candidacy, it has at least raised eyebrows among some students and faculty members. Although Feldstein's policy proposals are far from chapter and verse Reaganomics, he is an outspoken critic of social welfare programs.

Among some observers, the inevitable question is whether "the Kremlin on the Charles" is ready for a diehard free market economist.

The big question about Neil Rudenstine, on the other hand, is why he bowed out of consideration for the Princeton presidency in 1987. Many Princeton observers say they were surprised and disappointed that the longtime Princeton administrator, considered by many an obvious choice for president, left the university for the Mellon Foundation.