The 48-year-old Pinker, whose work has encompassed a wide range of topics, would seem to fit the bill.

University spokesperson Lucie McNeil says of Summers’s involvement, “He went through the normal selection process with [the Faculty].”

Chair of the Department of Psychology Daniel Schacter declined to comment on the search process.

According to an article in the Boston Globe, this hiring may have broken something of a gentleman’s agreement between Harvard and MIT not to hire prominent faculty away from each other.

But Schacter and Pinker both say they were not aware of any such agreement.

“There’s been lots of hiring going both ways, even in the psychology department,” says Schacter.

Lindsley Professor of Psychology Stephen M. Kosslyn, also denied that there was any such agreement.

“Faculty are their own people; they aren’t in any sense ‘owned’ by their institutions,” he wrote in an e-mail.

When speculation first arose in February that Harvard would make a bid for Pinker, MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department Chair Mriganka Sur expressed dismay at the possibility of losing Pinker.

He said that MIT would do whatever it could to keep Pinker.

“I certainly wish Harvard wouldn’t do this,” he said then.

The mood at MIT last week was somewhat more resigned.

“We’re disappointed, we’re sad to see him go, but we’re not resentful of Harvard,” says Edward Gibson, an associate professor at MIT who has worked closely with Pinker.

Other faculty and staff at MIT echoed Gibson’s feelings, saying that they were sorry to lose Pinker, but understood Harvard’s reasons for making the offer and Pinker’s reasons for accepting it.

The Welcome Wagon