1905–1972 · American political scientist, Columbia University
Wallace Stanley Sayre (June 24, 1905 – May 18, 1972) was an American political scientist who moved to Columbia University in 1954 and held the Eaton Professorship of Public Administration there until his death; The New York Times considered him a leading authority on New York City government. With Herbert Kaufman he wrote the 815-page Governing New York City (1960), still the standard anatomy of the city’s political machinery. He is remembered far more widely, and far less accurately, for a one-line joke about faculty meetings that no one can prove he wrote down.