Edward Lurie

Edward Lurie, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Delaware, died March 8, 2008. He had been declining health for several months. Lurie was the author of the path-breaking biography, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science (1960, 1988), a book described by the late Stephen Jay Gould as "the best work on this central figure in the history of American biography and probably the best biography in the last fifty years on the life of an American biologist." Louis Agassiz was designated one of the one hundred classic works of Americana in the John F. Kennedy White house Library. Lurie also wrote Nature and the American Mind: Louis Agassiz and the Culture of Science (1974), and was editor and author of numerous scholarly articles on American Science and culture. His friends, colleagues, and students will remember his ready sense of irony and his way with words. He was born April 10, 1927, in New York City, the son of Alexander and Ella (Lottman) Lurie. He served in the United States Navy in World War II, and was stationed on Saipan when the war ended. He earned a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 1949 in the first group of veterans to be admitted after WW II, then a master's degree (1951) and a doctoral degree (1956) from Northwestern University, the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center at Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Delaware, where he was a professor for twenty-five years. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Social Science Research Council Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, grants from the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Philosophical society. He also held research fellowships at Yale University and at Harverd University. He was married first to Nancy Oestreich in 1951; they were divorced in 1963. He is survived by his wife of forty years, Janice Ferguson Lurie; his step-children, Kathy Wilson, of Avondale, Pennsylvania, and Russell Snodgrass, of Albuquerque, New Mexico; his sister Sharon Herald, of Los Gatos, California; and his step-grand daughter, Kathryn Freeman, of Greenboro, N.C. Burial will take place at the Veteran's Memorial Cemetery in Santa Fe. Graveside service will be conducted Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 1:30pm at Santa Fe National Cemetery. The Rivera Family of Santa Fe Funeral Options 417 East Rodeo Road Santa Fe, NM 87505 (505) 989-7032