Dean Ford announced the appointment of four men to the rank of assistant professor yesterday. The new appointees are Thomas E. Skidmore in History, and Dwight H. Perkins, Gerald D. Rosenthal, and Lester D. Taylor in Economics.

Skidmore spent three years as a Bliss Fellow, travelling in South America, Mexico, and Spain, and doing research on the recent political and social history of Brazil. After graduating from Denison College, in 1954, he spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

Parkins has done research on the economics of the Communist countries, especially the People's Republic of China. He has been an instructor at Harvard during the current academic year.

Rosenthal has specialized on the economics and administration of medical care and on labor economics. He taught for a year at Boston University, and has been an instructor at Harvard since 1962.

Taylor, an econometrician, has studied consumption in the United States and post-war unemployment in the United States and other countries. He has taught at Harvard since 1963.