When he took that post this year, he was appointed to an open-ended position--as opposed to the normal one-year appointments the institute makes.

Summers' post is entirely open-ended, created with the understanding that he is unsure of his long-term plans, Brookings' Director of Economic Studies Robert Litan has said.

Summers has always been a star in the field of economics--in 1983, at the age of 28, he became the youngest tenured professor in Harvard history and in 1993 he won the John Bates Clark Medal--given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40.

From 1983 to 1993, Summers served as a professor of economics at Harvard and from 1979 to 1982 was on the faculty of MIT.

He served as a domestic policy economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1983.

Summers graduated from MIT in 1975 and earned his doctorate from Harvard in 1982. His wife, Victoria, is a tax attorney.

The Process

Summers was one of four finalists the search committee focused on in the last month.

From the first days of the search, Harvard Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 was seen as a safe choice who could follow in the footsteps of Rudenstine. Bollinger, seen by many as the front-runner, and Princeton Professor Amy Gutmann '71 rounded out the short list.

The search committee has been meeting since last spring at hotels and private offices around the country, interviewing candidates and discussing their merits. In December, Robert G. Stone Jr. '45, chair of the search committee, announced a winnowed list of about 35 candidates to the Board of Overseers --including Harvard Business School Dean Kim B. Clark '74 and Harvard Medical School Dean Joseph B. Martin.

In recent weeks, the committee has shuttled between hotels in New York and Boston, discussing and interviewing candidates in order to reach a consensus.

The search committee consisted of the six members of the Harvard Corporation and three members of the Board of Overseers.