Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- A little more than a year since Harvard University President Lawrence Summers ignited a furor by suggesting women may lack the aptitude for science and math, the first names coming up as his possible successor are mostly women.

Summers resigned Feb. 21 as head of the oldest U.S. university, vanquished after a five-year war with faculty members who found him arrogant and divisive. He will remain until the end of the current school year and then be replaced by a predecessor, Derek Bok, until a successor is named.

Harvard German professor Judith Ryan, one of the leaders of the anti-Summers faction, said it would be ``delightful'' if Harvard had its first woman president. The name of Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, ``keeps coming up a lot,'' said Nancy Hopkins, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Former Harvard professor Cornel West, who left for Princeton University after a run-in with Summers, said Harvard should consider as models Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania; Brown University's Ruth J. Simmons; and Princeton University's Shirley M. Tilghman.

``They've got precisely what Derek Bok has: decency, empathy, maturity and vision,'' West said. West went to Princeton in 2002, after Summers questioned his scholarship and his decision to record a rap CD. It was one of the first public airings of discontent at the campus.

No Answers, Yet

The members of Harvard Corp., the board that runs the 370- year-old university with a $25.9 billion endowment, the largest in the U.S., didn't return calls to comment on the possibility of a woman being considered as president. Corning Inc. Chairman James Houghton, a corporation member, praised Summers at a press conference on the day he quit and then didn't take questions. University spokesman Alan Stone declined to comment.

Summers, a former U.S. Treasury secretary, was popular among students at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus; he was opposed by the 690-member arts and sciences faculty. Harvard has about 11,500 professors.

Gutmann, who received a bachelor's degree and Ph.D. from Harvard, is a favorite of some faculty members at the university, said Bruce Fuller, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Fuller was a Harvard professor from 1989 to 1996.

``Gutmann is a widely respected scholar, and her scholarship is all about democratic participation,'' Fuller said. ``Larry Summers's downfall is explained in part by his not understanding that universities are democratic institutions. She is a much more participatory leader and open leader than Summers.''

Women Administrators

Gutmann is a former Princeton provost and director of the school's Center for Human Values. She was lauded as a ``brilliant scholar'' and ``skilled administrator'' by James Riepe, the chairman of Penn's board of trustees.

Gutmann didn't return a call for comment.

Simmons was president of Smith College before taking over at Brown in 2000. She set up the first engineering program at a women's college. Tilghman, a professor of molecular biology, was named the first woman president of Princeton in 2001.

Ryan said that Gutmann, Tilghman and Simmons would be good candidates and that the list of potential contenders will grow.

``It would be delightful to see a woman rise to the list of finalists,'' Ryan said. ``I wouldn't specifically be looking for a woman. We should just look as widely as we possibly can.''

Historian Mentioned

Ryan wrote the latest no-confidence motion against Summers that was scheduled for a vote Feb. 28. Summers lost a non-binding no-confidence vote last year shortly after his remarks about women and their aptitude for science and math.

Radcliffe's Faust, a Civil War expert, has been mentioned as a possible candidate because she is a prize-winning historian and scholar and a respected administrator, said Hopkins, the Amgen Inc. Professor of Biology at MIT, who was at Summers's speech when he made the comment about women lacking the aptitude for science.

``You need demonstrated experience in academic leadership, and she has that,'' Hopkins said.

A potential male candidate now at Harvard is Provost Steven Hyman, said Gabriel Kaplan, a professor who teaches courses on collegiate governance at the University of Colorado at Denver.

Summers's conflicts with professors that eventually drove him from office may make members of Harvard Corp. take their time in choosing a successor, Kaplan and others said.

Inside Track?

Kaplan said the next president will probably come from the school, which counts seven U.S. presidents among its graduates.

``They like to appoint from within the organization or from outside academia, because to take another university's leader would suggest that they have better personnel,'' Kaplan said. ``Harvard doesn't like to admit that it covets anything at another institution.''

Summers, 51, said in a statement that he would take a year's sabbatical and then may return to Harvard as a professor. He is the first economist to lead the university.

Harvard student body president John Haddock said he would like to see someone who has Summers's commitment to undergraduate students chosen for the top job.

``Hopefully, in his last semester he can push his priorities,'' said Haddock, a 21-year-old junior.

To contact the reporters on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net; Patrick Cole in New York at pcole3@Bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 23, 2006 00:05 EST