The rumors have been flying that Thomas Cech, the leader of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, was one of the final contenders for the Harvard presidency. Well, those rumors were laid to rest today. He told the Boston Globe that he’s withdrawn his application.

Considering that HHMI’s Janelia Farm just opened, something that Cech has been able to build from the ground up, I would have been surprised if he was ready to leave that to come to Harvard and have to deal with the strictures that come with Harvard’s history and tradition.

Update (Feb. 1): The Globe has followed up with a longer article. It speculates that Harvard might be having trouble attracting top candidates, given Summers’s struggles to unify a faculty used to much more decentralized control.