November 21, 1985

Columbia University's trustees had one great honor left to give I. I. Rabi, and they gave it yesterday, announcing the creation of an Isidor Isaac Rabi chair in physics. Columbia has named few professorships for its scholars in their lifetimes. Dr. Rabi, its first University Professor, the Nobel Prize winner who created its renowned postwar physics department, was recognized at the age of 87 for a rare combination of achievements in pure science and public service. ''I. I. Rabi is a brilliant jewel in Columbia's crown,'' said Columbia's president, Michael I. Sovern. ''He is one of the truly extraordinary scientists of our century, a wise and humane man who has been and remains a beacon for nuclear sanity in our threatened world. We are exceptionally proud to create a professorship in the name of this worthy man.''

Tantalizing but sketchy clues pointing to Africa as the origin of AIDS have unleashed one of the bitterest disputes in the recent annals of medicine. Thus far the search has led American research to two African children who in 1963 lived in Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso. On the basis of blood samples that had been frozen and stored since that time, they are believed to have been infected with the AIDS virus or with one similar to it. This clue and several others have led to what has now emerged as the prevailing thesis in American and European medical circles that the worldwide spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome began in Central Africa, the home of several other recently recognized diseases. Disagreement by Africans The Africans vigorously disagree, and there is some criticism of the validity of the studies on which the theories are predicated. Indeed, controversial new results that point both to and against Africa as the origin of AIDS are fueling the international furor.

A Company News report in Business Day on Tuesday about Ameritech's planned purchase of Applied Data Research Inc. incorrectly quoted a securities analyst, Scott Smith of the Gartner Group, who discussed the $215 million price. He said the price equaled about one and a half times Applied Data's annual revenues, not its earnings.

A Washington dispatch on Oct. 8, about action by the Environmental Protection Agency to ban some products, misstated the decision. Because of the skin cancer risk, it banned most pesticide products containing creosote and coal tar, aside from wood preservatives.

''If the two leaders spent more than four hours together, I would think the chemistry is pretty good.'' - Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman. [A16:5.]