Harvard University lawyers yesterday ordered Medical School librarians to close off public access to the papers of a former faculty member who in the 1940s and 1950s subjected retarded children to experiments involving radiation.

The 27 boxes of files document the work of Dr. Clemens E. Benda, a Harvard Medical School faculty member until 1964 and director of clinical psychiatry at the Fernald State School for the retarded from 1946 to 1962.

Curator of Archives and Manuscripts Richard J. Wolf, who is in charge of the Benda papers at Countway Library, confirmed that access to the files, which had been open, is now being restricted. He would not comment further.

The order to seal the documents came in a two-page letter sent over the weekend to Wolf by an attorney in the University's Office of General Counsel, Harvard officials said.

In 1954, Benda reported in the Journal of Nutrition on a study in which retarded children at the school were fed radioactive milk with their breakfast cereal to monitor their uptake of calcium. Benda died in 1975.

Former Fernald residents have said repeatedly in interviews, and two testified before a Senate panel last week, that they were not told of the radiation used in the experiments. The students participating in the tests were called members of a "Science Club."

University Attorney Anne Taylor said Harvard had to close off the Benda files, which are uncatalogued, to meet its obligations to the state Department of Mental Retardation, which has requested University documents on the matter.

"We're working with an archivist...and moving as fast as we can to see what's relevant," Taylor said.

Taylor and Acting Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Jane Corlette said the files were closed down in part to meet a request by Fernald officials that patients' names remain confidential.

"In the middle of an investigation you can't have 20 million people going through documents," Corlette said. "And I presume the information relevant to the investigation will be turned over once at Fernald."

Corlette said Harvard is "very close" to sending relevant documents to the Fernald School and that the first shipment could leave Harvard within "a day or two." Corlette said some of the documents sent to Fernald have to do with Benda's experiments.

Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics RichardWilson, however, said yesterday that theUniversity's move comes most likely as a result oflegal worries.

"I don't expect Harvard to behave differentlyfrom any big corporation," Wilson said."Institutions automatically do that. If they'resensing a hint of a legal attack, they'llretrench. If there's any hint that someone willsue Harvard, the files will be closed."

"Once it gets into the hands of the lawyers,you and I are helpless. Harvard can behave as astupid institution. Harvard behaves that way andhas to behave that way because of the lawyers,"Wilson added.

Because many of the holdings at the MedicalSchool's Countway Library are the property of theBoston Medical Library, which houses part of itscollection under the same roof, it is not clearwhether Harvard has the authority to deny accessto the Benda files, a source at the CountwayLibrary said yesterday.

The head librarian at Countway Library did notreturn repeated phone calls yesterday.

The 27 boxes of Benda's papers includecorrespondence and records from his time at theFernald School, as well as other research,lecturing and consulting materials, according toHarvard's library computer network, HOLLIS.

A large part of the papers are patient files,including case histories, psychiatric evaluations,photographs and charts. The boxes contain filesfrom the Fernald School, from Benda's privatepractice in Boston and from Berlin, where he wastrained as a doctor.

Harvard spokesperson Joe Wrinn, who last weekfielded questions about Harvard's investigationinto the experiments from members of the nationalmedia, said yesterday he was unaware of theUniversity's action