Jeremy R. Knowles, the chemist who led the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) through the 1990s, will move back into University Hall this summer to become the interim dean of FAS.

Incoming Interim President Derek C. Bok made the announcement Monday afternoon, casting Knowles as ideally suited to lead a faculty in transition.

“If you’re going to have an interim dean, it’s very important that you have someone who’s going to be able to get on top of the job very quickly,” Bok said in an interview Monday. “Jeremy will understand how to perform the day he walks into the job.”

The appointment marks the long-awaited culmination of a search that began when William C. Kirby resigned in January under pressure from University President Lawrence H. Summers. And it leaves the University’s largest school in the hands of two Harvard veterans—Bok, 76, was president for two decades, and Knowles, 71, led FAS for 11 years.

During his tenure as dean, Knowles stressed fiscal discipline and placed increasing emphasis on growing the size of the Faculty. The Oxford-educated scientist is also renowned for his dry wit—which, even after 33 years at Harvard, Knowles still delivers in a refined British accent.

Accepting Bok’s appointment in a letter to colleagues on Monday, Knowles began: “In the light of his own generous decision, it was, of course, impossible for me to look President Bok in the eye and say ‘No.’”

Knowles first took the Faculty’s helm in 1991 under then-University President Neil L. Rudenstine, inheriting an $11.7 million budget deficit. The dean proceeded to tighten belts across FAS—provoking a small outcry when he cut 10 staff positions at the Semitic Museum. He had nearly erased the deficit by 1996.

Knowles returns to the deanship as FAS faces possible deficits yet again, resulting from a billion-dollar building boom and rapid growth in the Faculty’s ranks. The FAS Resources Committee said in January that the school could face a $100 million deficit in 2010 if it does not reel in spending, ramp up fundraising, or dip further into the endowment.

In an interview Monday, Knowles, the Houghton professor of chemistry and biochemistry, said he was not ready to commit to any changes in policy.

“I am probably known as a fiscal conservative, and I like to build on secure foundations,” Knowles said. “But I must first reacquaint myself with where we are in terms of appointments, in terms of our financial status, and in terms of our spirit.”

During his deanship, which ended a year into Summers’ presidency, Knowles also encouraged greater faculty-student interaction. He expanded the Freshman Seminar Program and pushed for smaller sections in undergraduate courses.

Beginning next semester, Knowles will oversee the looming debate over general education as part of the Harvard College Curricular Review. On Monday night, Knowles called the review a “major concern,” but did not specify how he intends to frame the debate.

“Dean Kirby initiated a number of important new programs, and I’ll want to build upon good foundations that he’s laid,” Knowles said.

At his final Faculty meeting as dean last week, Kirby said that a group of professors would draft legislation on general education over the summer—meaning that the Faculty may vote on a possible successor to the Core Curriculum as early as the fall.

Knowles, who did a two-year stint in the British Royal Air Force before graduating first-class from Oxford University, earned renown as a chemist before becoming an administrator. A scholar of enzymes, Knowles was the first to develop a full kinetic description of a simple enzyme-catalyzed reaction.

That enzyme, triosephosphate isomerase, or TIM, is now known to chemistry students everywhere.

AN INTERIM CHOICE

When Bok took over the dean search after the Harvard Corporation tapped him as interim president in February, he left open the option of appointing a permanent dean rather than a temporary one.

Reflecting on his decision to appoint an interim dean, Bok said Monday, “I think you should only appoint a permanent dean, when you’re interim president, if there is a very strong consensus choice—when you can actually say that it would be almost certain that the next president would want this person as dean.”

“That’s a very high bar,” he added. “We did not identify a candidate who could meet that specification.”

Bok said that the selection of a permanent dean would be left to his successor.

Asked how his leadership in the coming months will compare with previous deanships, Knowles said, “Obviously, an interim dean is going to have a different kind of agenda from that of a long-term dean.”

Yet he also enumerated goals echoing some of Kirby’s oft-stated priorities.

“One always wants to feel that one has increased the intellectual distinction and inspirational teaching of the faculty, that one has improved the experience of students in the College and the Graduate School, and that one has relieved the Faculty from administrative burdens so they can do their best work,” Knowles said.

As for how long he expects to serve as interim dean, Knowles said, “I devoutly hope and believe that the acting careers of President Bok and myself will be short.”

WORDS OF ADVICE

Bok took charge of the dean search on the heels of Summers’ struggle to do so. Six days before Summers resigned, the Faculty Council demanded that Summers halt the search until professors could be confident “that it would result in a dean who could enjoy the support of both the President and the FAS.”

After being selected as Summers’ immediate successor, Bok appointed a 10-member faculty advisory committee that met regularly to vet candidates for the deanship.

The search also included undergraduate and graduate student advisory committees, which each met with Bok once to discuss issues important to their constituencies. According the incoming president and student leaders on both groups, Bok listened to their concerns but barely discussed possible deans or their qualifications.

“I can’t say they were a great deal of help in identifying candidates, and I think they understood that,” Bok said of the student advisory committees. “Their main value, coming very late in the process, was that they had taken the time to canvass the student body and think very hard about what a new dean had to be concerned about.”

The outgoing Graduate Student Council president, Benjamin G. Lee, said his committee told Bok of issues concerning graduate students, including the availability of housing and of benefits to students with children.

The Undergraduate Council issued a statement May 14 outlining its priorities, calling for the next dean to “actively seek student opinion” and to “unleash the tremendous power that is inherent to community at a place like Harvard.”

Ryan A. Petersen ’08, the chair of the UC’s Student Affairs Committee and the sponsor of the UC’s statement, said he appreciated Bok’s willingness to meet but that he wished the incoming president had run possible candidates by the students.

“Student opinion does have merit in talking about some of the more confidential issues and can be trusted to do so,” Petersen said on Monday.

‘A GENEROUS INSTITUTIONALIST’

While Knowles received accolades from a wide range of professors this week, he is connected to some of the controversies that have dogged Summers.

It was Knowles who promoted Andrei Shleifer ’82 to an endowed professorship after the economist became embroiled in a fraud scandal stemming from the Harvard Institute for International Development’s dealings in Russia. In a 2002 deposition, Summers said he had told Knowles of his wish that Shleifer remain at Harvard despite the scandal.

And at a Faculty meeting in February 2005, Knowles proposed that a three-person group mediate between Summers and professors, who were still seething a month after the president’s comments on women in science. Faculty members shot down Knowles’ proposal, calling it undemocratic and prearranged.

But Harry R. Lewis ’68, dean of the College under Knowles and an outspoken critic of Summers, on Monday called Bok’s decision “a great appointment.”

“There is no one who understands Harvard better, or would work longer hours, with greater integrity, to help get Harvard back on its feet,” Lewis wrote in an e-mail.

And Kirby, Knowles’ successor and predecessor, called the next dean “an excellent choice.”

For his part, Knowles on Monday expressed a Cincinnatus-like attitude to Bok’s selection.

“It didn’t escape my notice that I might be vulnerable to an approach, so of course I assembled self-interested arguments against that,” Knowles said. “It’s hard, when faced with such a generous institutionalist like President Bok, not to feel the same way.”

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.