News & Events In Memoriam

The In Memoriam page is where Amherst College posts notices of the deaths of any current faculty members, staff members, students or trustees, as well as faculty or staff who have retired from the College. Scroll down on this page to see the most recent notices.

Members of the Amherst community are invited to log in and leave comments on each notice, to share memories and honor the deceased. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

Alumni obituaries and remembrances can be found on the In Memory page and in the print version of each issue of Amherst magazine.

Amherst College mourns the passing of  Lawrence “Alan” Babb, the Willem Schupf Professor of Asian Languages and Civilizations and Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, on Nov. 21, 2023. 

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a Nov. 27 email to faculty and staff:

I was fortunate to speak with Alan at a recent gathering, and as always I was struck by what a lovely person he was. A member of the Amherst faculty for more than four decades, he began his appointment here in 1969 and retired in 2012.

As an anthropologist of South Asia, Alan earned an international reputation for his groundbreaking scholarship. His research, which mostly took the form of anthropological fieldwork, was conducted in villages, temples, and workplaces—among worshipers, merchants, and migrant communities. His first field project (1966–1967) was a study of popular Hinduism in Raipur District in central India. This led to an interest in urban Hinduism that played a role in shaping his next two projects. In 1973–1974, he undertook a year of research on the religious institutions of the Indian migrant community of Singapore, and, four years later, he spent a year in Delhi studying modern sectarian movements in Hinduism. In the mid-1980s, Alan shifted his attention to the Jains; this culminated in a year’s work (1990–1991) in the Jain community of Jaipur. As before, this generated new projects.  Jainism finds most of its adherents among merchant castes, and because of Alan’s close contact with these groups, he developed an interest in the role of merchant communities in Indian society. This led to a return to Jaipur for a year of research (1996–1997) on the social identities of some of the region’s most prominent trading castes. Alan spent part of the next year in Jodhpur doing collaborative research with colleagues on two temple complexes. This, however, was a brief detour. Alan’s main interest remained focused on business communities, and this gave rise to his ethnographic and historical study of the gemstone industry of Jaipur. He began his research on the industry in 2005, and the book resulting from this work, Emerald City: The Birth and Evolution of an Indian Gemstone Industry, was published eight years later.  Alan published six other single-authored books and two co-authored volumes, two co-edited books, and more than sixty articles.  His research was supported and recognized through numerous prestigious fellowship awards throughout his career, among them a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship and an NEH Senior Research Fellowship.

In the classroom, Alan was a legend. A gifted lecturer and storyteller with a wonderful sense of humor, he conveyed his knowledge and passion for his subject; set high standards, while providing the support that students needed to be successful; and encouraged his students to think deeply and critically. As a teacher and mentor, he was known not only for his enthusiasm, clarity, and attention to detail, but also for his care and kindness. Alan was also an extraordinary citizen of his two departments and brought his insights and strong work ethic to his service on numerous and varied faculty committees, including two terms each on the Committee of Six and the Committee on Educational Policy. He was also an active participant in his field and was sought-after as a speaker, panelist, and reviewer around the globe.

In remarks that she gave on the occasion of Alan’s final lecture at the college in 2012, Maria Heim, George Lyman Crosby 1896 and Stanley Warfield Crosby Professor in Religion, noted the following: “From Alan we have learned so much from his treatment of devotional and ritual practices; of the logic of religious sacrifice; of ideologies of martial valor, heroism, and kingship. We have learned about and from the sages, teachers, and miracle-workers he has met and studied. Alan has shown us how myths work and how they inflect human history and experience in complex and immediate ways. He has taught us of the ideologies and practices of religious asceticism, of violence, and non-violence. He has charted the processes of modern identity formation and the nature of subjectivity and the ways the self is constructed and displayed, and he has shown the complex intertwining of economics and religion in his work on trading and business communities in Rajasthan. And of course there is more. But let me speak  finally,  if I may speak for all of us here at Amherst, of how much we’ve  appreciated the intelligence and decency of his collegiality, the drollness of his wit, the wonderfulness of his wife, Nancy, and the kindness of his friendship.”

On behalf of the college, I extend our condolences to Nancy and other family members, including Alan and Nancy’s two children, Sarah and Michael. 

If and when plans for a memorial service become known, they will be posted on this page.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

Amherst College mourns the passing of Peter Czap, the Henry Winkley Professor of History, Emeritus, on Oct. 24, 2023. 

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in an Oct. 27 email to faculty and staff:

Peter received a B.A from Rutgers University in 1953 and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1959. After teaching for two years at the College of William and Mary, he came to Amherst, where his career spanned some forty-seven years, from 1961 until his retirement in 2008. At the college, Peter taught many courses on Russian and European history, including innovative courses on the multi-ethnic nature of the Soviet Union that presaged its eventual dissolution. He also taught well-received first-year seminars with titles such as “War” and “Memory,” the latter with his future wife, Susan Snively, and others. As a scholar, Peter focused on the family structure of the Russian peasantry during the Tsarist era; his studies of pre-industrial peasant demographic behavior were supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.  In search of archival material, Peter spent several sabbaticals at Moscow State University, one of which coincided with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. One day, Peter noticed that he was no longer receiving delivery of the International Herald-Tribune and was totally reliant on Radio Moscow for news; only after the crisis ended, when he received a stack of back issues delivered to his doorstep, did he learn the true danger of the moment.  

In department meetings, I enjoyed Peter's endearingly crusty humor. John Servos, Peter's longtime colleague and fellow professor of history, recalls how "Peter had a sardonic wit and cultivated a cynicism that was particularly suited to his specialization in Tsarist Russia." John further notes that "But the cynicism masked a heart of gold. ... [Peter] gave generously to teaching, much of it spent on sparking genuine curiosity among students through careful reading of primary sources. He volunteered for more than his fair share of departmental chores and served on countless search committees. Those who served with him on these searches came away impressed with his scholarly range, kindness to anxious job applicants, shrewd judgment, and steady good humor. He was an exemplary colleague."  

When Peter suffered terrible injuries after being struck by a car late in his career, his many devoted friends were essential to his recovery.  He married Susan in 2000, and together they transformed their eighteenth-century house into a place where Peter’s gardening and cooking skills delighted their visitors.  Ever active in retirement, he enjoyed travel, including fishing trips to Maine. Peter is survived by Susan and three children—Nick, Nadia, and Peter.  

If and when plans for a memorial service become known, they will be posted on this page.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add Comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

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Amherst College mourns the passing of Peter Pouncey on May 30, 2023. Pouncey served as the 16th president of the College from 1984 to 1994 and remained at Amherst as the Burnell-Forbes Professor of Greek until 1998.

Please see this obituary for more information.

Please see further details about the October 1 memorial service to be held in Johnson Chapel.

Amherst College mourns the passing of Martha Saxton, Professor of History and Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies and Elizabeth W. Bruss Reader, Emerita, on July 18, 2023. 

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a July 20 email to the campus community:

Martha, an accomplished historian whose scholarship focused on the relationship between ideology and the interior lives of American women; a beloved teacher; and a generous citizen of the college, was a member of our faculty between 1996 and 2016.  She died at home, surrounded by loved ones, on July 18, at the age of seventy-seven, after a long illness.

Martha’s path to becoming an academic was not a typical one. After earning a B.A. in history from the University of Chicago in 1967, she became a biographer, a career that brought her great success over close to two decades. Martha’s first book, a groundbreaking feminist biography of actress Jayne Mansfield, was published in 1976.  Another acclaimed biography followed a year later, Louisa May: A Modern Biography of Louisa May Alcott. These were among the first feminist biographies of women that challenged pervasive gender stereotypes. Within a few years of Louisa May’s publication, Martha enrolled in the Ph.D. program in history at Columbia, receiving her doctorate in 1989. Her third book, based on her dissertation, titled Being Good: Women’s Moral Values in Early America, was published in 2003.  In this work, Martha explored the question “How did American women think about trying to live a good life?” in three different settings: seventeenth-century Puritan New England, eighteenth-century tidewater Virginia, and nineteenth-century St. Louis. Three more books followed, two co-authored with Amherst colleagues, including Amherst in the World, an important project linked to the college's bicentennial. Martha's most recent, much acclaimed biography, published in 2019, was of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington’s mother. Martha also authored numerous reviews, articles, and interviews on wide-ranging subjects.

As a teacher, Martha left a deep mark on Amherst’s curriculum and on the students she taught over two decades, many of whom described their experiences with her as transformative.  In her courses on women's history and gender, Martha integrated her other interests, which included Colonial North America and the U.S. up to the Civil War, the Old South, and African American and Native American history.  For almost a decade, Martha taught courses that brought together Amherst students and inmates at the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction.  Beyond her areas of specialization, Martha also taught and co-taught courses on injustice and inequality with Amrita Basu–courses that reflected Martha’s wide ranging interests, passionate political engagement, and deep intellectual curiosity.

A highly respected and engaged member of the college community, Martha served on many important committees, including the Committee of Six (twice) and the Special Committee on Amherst Education.  

A citation by colleagues to mark Martha’s retirement from Amherst in 2016 described her as “worldly, grounded, compassionate, irreverent, modest, witty, soft spoken, outspoken, rebellious, diplomatic, audacious, and wise.” A wonderful colleague to me and many others, Martha Saxton was all this and more. She will be greatly missed.

For more information, see this obituary. As information about a memorial service becomes available, it will be posted on this page.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add Comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

Amherst College mourns the passing of Lewis Spratlan, ​the Peter R. Pouncey Professor of Music, Emeritus, on Feb. 9, 2023. He served on the Amherst faculty for 36 years, joining the music department in 1970 and retiring in 2006. 

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a Feb. 14 email to faculty and staff:

Lew’s colleagues in the music department describe him as a consummate musician and generous colleague who inspired generations of young composers to find their own creative voice. “Lew’s unbounded energy for creativity and teaching leaves us with a large and distinguished catalog of musical work stretching over six decades, and a tradition of thoughtful, hands-on music making within our department,” they said. In addition to being an inspiring and beloved teacher, Lew was the founding conductor of the Amherst-Mount Holyoke Orchestra, a chamber music coach, and the conductor and acting director of the Amherst College Orchestra for many years. In addition, during his time at the college, he was known as the best oboe player in the Valley.

An accomplished and widely recognized composer on the international stage, Lew received the Pulitzer Prize in music in 2000 for a concert version of Act Two of his three-act opera titled Life Is A Dream, which was based on a play by the seventeenth-century Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca. The late Jim Maraniss, Professor of Spanish, Emeritus, and Lew’s good friend and colleague at Amherst, wrote the libretto. The opera was premiered in its entirety in 2010 by Santa Fe Opera. Lew also collaborated on other works with other Amherst faculty, including Jenny Kallick, Professor of Music, Emerita, and Connie Congdon, Playwright-in-Residence, Emerita. Lew’s other honors include the Charles Ives Opera Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as Guggenheim, Rockefeller, National Endowment for the Arts, and MacDowell Fellowships, among many other accolades. His music continues to be performed regularly around the world. 

Lew earned undergraduate (in composition and theory of music) and graduate degrees (in composition) from Yale University and taught and conducted at Penn State University, Tanglewood, and the Yale Summer School of Music.

For more information, see this obituary published in The Boston Globe and this obituary in The New York Times.

The Amherst College community and general public are invited to a memorial celebration on May 7 at 3 p.m. at Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst. The program will include remembrances and live performances of Spratlan's compositions featuring Elizabeth Chang, Matt Haimovitz, Charlotte Malin, Nadia Shpachenko and Jiayan Sun.

Amherst College mourns the passing of Tanya Leise, the Brian E. Boyle Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, on Jan. 18, 2023. 

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a Jan. 20 email to the campus community:

An applied mathematician who was the first woman mathematician to be tenured at Amherst, Tanya focused her research on mathematical modeling, particularly biomathematics (especially circadian and ultradian behavioral rhythms)—publishing widely. Her 2006 co-authored (with Kurt Bryan) article on the linear algebra behind Google is considered a landmark expository piece. A beloved teacher, Tanya particularly enjoyed teaching courses that included some applications: linear algebra, multivariable calculus, mathematical modeling, wavelet and Fourier analysis, and other applied mathematics electives. She was dedicated to student-faculty collaborative research and was actively engaged in conducting research with students both during the academic year and as part of Amherst summer programs.

Tanya earned a B.S. degree in mathematics from Stanford, with honors, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, also in mathematics, from Texas A&M University. She taught at several other institutions before coming to Amherst as a visiting assistant professor in 2004 and was appointed to a tenure-track position here in 2007; Tanya became a tenured professor in 2013, and she was promoted to the rank of full professor in 2018.

After taking medical leave and teaching remotely during the pandemic, Tanya was delighted to return to the classroom and her department last spring and this fall. As recently as last week, she was part of interviews, via Zoom, with candidates for a tenure-track position in the mathematics and statistics department. She was also looking forward to her sabbatical this spring. A core member of her department, Tanya served as department chair, math colloquia organizer, and comprehensive exam director, in addition to many other roles. She is also credited with creating Amherst’s applied mathematics curriculum. Tanya contributed to the life of the college in myriad ways, serving on the Committee of Six and the Committee on Priorities and Resources (including as chair), among many other bodies.

Beyond Amherst, Tanya was a talented violist, avid reader, and lover of classical music and animals. Her dogs, Bonnie and Maisie, accompanied her to the office on a regular basis. She took perhaps her greatest joy in her family.  Our hearts go out to Tanya’s husband, Andrew Cohen, a professor of psychology at UMass-Amherst, and to Tanya and Andrew’s daughter, Adira, a student at the university, as well as to all of Tanya’s colleagues and students.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

Amherst mourns the passing of Donald White, professor of German, emeritus, on Dec. 21, 2022. He began his career at Amherst in 1957 and taught in the German department for more than four decades, retiring in 1999.  He arrived at Amherst soon after earning a master’s degree from Yale; he also received a bachelor’s degree in 1953 from Yale and, in 1963, a Ph.D.  According to his colleagues in Amherst’s German department, Don “worked for Amherst College tirelessly.  He was beloved by his students and his colleagues alike, and he will be missed by all who knew him."

His translation of The Island of Second Sight, a German novel by Albert Vigoleis Thelen, was first published by Galileo Press of Cambridge, England, in 2010.  Three years later, it was published in the U.S. by the Overlook Press of New York City. Don earned the PEN Translation Prize for 2013 and a Helen and Kurt Wolfe award from the Goethe Institute.  In all, there have been five editions of his award-winning translation.

Don was principal violist with the Pioneer Valley Symphony and played in chamber groups for many colleges and universities in the area.  

A memorial celebration of Don’s life will take place on Saturday, May 6, 2023, at 11:30 a.m., at the Canadian Club in Barre, Vt.  As more information becomes available, we will share it here.  Please see Don’s obituary for more information.