Thirteen years ago, it didn't take much wooing to lure Simon M. Schama from Cambridge, England to Cambridge, Mass.

"They were sniffing at me and I was sniffing at them," says Schama, Mellon professor of the social sciences, of his 1980 move to Harvard.

But it took far more courting to draw the highly acclaimed scholar of modern European intellectual history from Cambridge to New York.

After an intense and drawn-out recruiting effort by New York's Columbia University that kept Schama's Harvard colleagues and students on edge for more than a year, Schama this spring accepted an offer to join Columbia's departments of history and art history in the fall.

His departure means the loss of one of Harvard's most prized scholars--a popular teacher with a burgeoning international reputation. More than that, however, it represents another chapter in the escalation of bidding wars for big-name professors at the nation's elite colleges and universities.

Harvard--which for decades has relied almost exclusively on its name to attract and keep academic stars--is increasingly finding itself outgunned by other schools offering more attractive salaries and perks.

The subtle solicitation started more than a year ago when Schama's wife, Virginia E. Papaioannou, was offered a tenured position at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons--complete with her own laboratory.

Papaioannou, an associate professor of pathology at Tufts University Medical School, is working on better techniques for creating genetically altered, or transgenic, mice.

Soon after, Columbia offered Schama a position that Papaiaounnou calls "clearly compatible" with the one he has held at Harvard.

"Columbia decided they would approach me," says Schama. "But it wouldn't have happened had not the scientific opportunity happened for Ginny."

Harvard and other top universities around the country have come to realize, over the past few years, that the considerations made by professors in deciding to relocate go far beyond their own interests.

Spouses, for example, can play as important a role in determining the feasibility of a move as the recruited professor. In an urban location such as Boston, saturated with universities and other industry, job placement for non-academic professional spouses is not difficult.

In years past, Harvard simply found posts for spouses. For example, Georgene B. Herschbach, wife of Nobel Prize-winning Baird Professor of Science Dudley R. Herschbach, works as registrar for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Jane S. Knowles, wife of current Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, is a librarian in Radcliffe's Schlesinger Library.

But dual career academic families present new problems. In electing to offer tenure to one spouse, Harvard has increasingly become aware that with the rarity of tenured positions at top universities in a given region, the future of the spouse's career must be taken into account.

Peter L. Galison '77, a historian of 20th century physics, was tenured in 1991 by the History of Science Department. But he wouldn't accept the Harvard offer until officials secured a position for his site--who is now a professor of fine arts at Boston University.