Seeking to nurture the sense of calm that has settled over the campus since its besieged president resigned last fall, Rockefeller University in Manhattan has appointed its acting president, Dr. Torsten Wiesel, to remain in the office for at least three more years.
In November, Dr. Wiesel took over the university from Dr. David Baltimore, who had been caught up in a ferocious debate over his role in a scientific paper containing data found to be fraudulent.
Dr. Baltimore, a noted molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, was never accused of committing fraud himself, but many believed that he erred in stubbornly dismissing repeated accusations that his collaborator, Dr. Thereza Imanishi-Kari, had fabricated data for an immunology paper that appeared in the journal Cell. The relentless criticism of his behavior and threats of a faculty exodus finally drove him to resign.
Dr. Wiesel, a Rockefeller professor of neurobiology and also a Nobelist, was appointed as a temporary president, with plans to find a replacement as quickly as possibly. But the Rockefeller Board of Directors will announce today that Dr. Wiesel, 67 years old, will remain as president through 1995 or perhaps longer. Many faculty members, and Dr. Wiesel himself, said that his fondness for diplomacy and his refusal to take sides on the battle over Dr. Baltimore's behavior were keys to his success, helping him to steer the university back toward normalcy. 'Sailing in a Good Wind'
"I think of Rockefeller as a very solid cruise ship," Dr. Wiesel said in an interview. "It's been through some bad weather, and a few people have fallen overboard, but now we're sailing in a good wind."
Dr. Wiesel, a native of Uppsala, Sweden, whose soft voice and gentle manner put him in stark contrast to the more volatile and hard-driving Dr. Baltimore, seems to be widely liked by his colleagues.
"Torsten doesn't want to be controversial, he just wants to restore peace on campus," said Dr. Claude Desplan, a young Rockefeller geneticist who last year expressed support for Dr. Baltimore. "I have a lot of respect for Torsten, and even though he's conservative, he'll change his mind if you can give him a good argument."
But faculty members also said Dr. Wiesel has much work ahead of him, as he attempts to recruit young scientists to a university staffed largely by aging professors accustomed to an old-fashioned hierarchy where they lead large laboratories and junior scientists until recently have had little opportunity for advancement.
Before Dr. Baltimore arrived as president in 1990 from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., some Rockefeller professors had tried resuscitating the venerable but rather musty university by hiring young scientists, and Dr. Baltimore had aggressively extended the recruitment program. Some of Dr. Baltimore's supporters have claimed that it was his vigorous attempts at shaking up the status quo as much as his involvement with the disputed research paper that led to his downfall, but those who opposed the Baltimore presidency scoff at the notion, insisting they are as eager as anybody to pump the university with new blood. 'Conflict Is Still Existing'
A Rockefeller professor who spoke only on the condition of anonymity said more changes in the university's rigid hierarchical structure must be made. "We thought we had to change, and David Baltimore tried to do that, but some frictions took place because of this," said the professor. "That conflict is still existing."
Dr. Wiesel promises to continue the effort to seek new talent and to give junior researchers the sort of professional autonomy they can expect at other prominent American universities. He also hopes to woo physicists and chemists, a desire that reverses Dr. Baltimore's efforts to phase out the physical sciences at Rockefeller in favor of biomedical research.
Dr. Baltimore currently remains at Rockefeller as a working scientist, but he has refused requests for interviews about his long-term plans.
"The university is much more lively than it was two years ago," said Dr. Desplan. "Not everybody is jumping up and down saying, 'This is the best place, best place, best place,' but we're confident we're giving it new life."
Photo: Dr. Torsten Wiesel, acting president of Rockefeller University, has been appointed to remain in office for at least three more years. (William E. Sauro/The New York Times)
