Many professors and administrators say it is important that appointment searches ignore the family aspect until the recruitment process, after the candidate has already been selected and cleared an ad hoc committee.

"The mandate is to find the best possible person, not the most available or most movable person," Todd says.

That's not the case at all universities. At the University of California at Berkeley, for example, "when we try to hire people it's not just who we want but can we get them," says Christina D. Romer, a professor at the school who is involved in recruiting there.

"If [their spouse] has an established medical practice we might make a formal phone call, but it's not worth the long hiring process because there's a very small chance," says Romer, who will be a professor at the Kennedy School along with her husband next year.

Professors who have found themselves in the two-career situation say that each partner wants to be considered for his or her own record, not as a recruitment tool for snagging the spouse.

Frederick Schauer, Stanton professor of the First Amendment at the Kennedy School, and his wife Virginia J. Wise, lecturer on law for legal research at the Law School, decided to come to Harvard in 1990 over an offer from the University of Chicago.

"One of the big appeals for both of us is that both of us were hired independently," says Schauer, who says that although he was approached first, Harvard had looked at them each individually.

Wise says the University of Chicago was just "going through the motions" with her hiring process and that they really wanted her husband.

"I'd been at Harvard before," says Wise, who worked here in the library system before her marriage, "so I knew that people knew me before I even met Fred, that I had an independent identity, and that was a very important piece for me."

Mallinckrodt Professor of the History of Science and Physics Peter L. Galison '77 agreed.

"If it becomes apparent to a couple that the university is insensitive to it, it can actually trip up an appointment," he says.

Still, many professors in two-career marriages make a definite decision to put their family before career advancement.

Romer and her husband David, for example, have made a conscious decision to travel as a team.

"We've made it very clear to schools that we were a package," Romer says. "That surely limited the number of schools that wanted us, but we've been very happy at the schools that wanted us."

Galison also says he would not have come to Harvard had his wife, Boston University assistant professor of art Caroline A. Jones '76, not been able to find a job nearby.