Allen Kropf (d. 2024)

Amherst College mourns the passing of  Allen Kropf, the Julian H. Gibbs 1946 Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, on March 7, 2024.

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a March 8 email to faculty and staff:

Allen joined Amherst’s chemistry department in 1958 as an instructor, was tenured in 1963, and became a full professor in 1968.  By the time of his retirement in 2000, he had taught at the college for forty-two years.

Allen earned a B.S. in chemistry from Queens College and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.  During his distinguished career, he held visiting appointments as an instructor at Woods Hole’s Marine Biological Laboratories; NSF Science Faculty Fellow at Berkeley; NIH Special Fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel; visiting professor in the Department of Biophysics at Kyoto University; visiting professor in the Department of Physical Chemistry at Hebrew University; and visiting scholar in biology at Harvard, among others.

An accomplished and admired teacher, Allen developed many of the courses taught in the chemistry curriculum during his time at the college; designed and taught a number of interdisciplinary science courses for non-science majors; and also proposed, developed, and initiated the biophysics program at Amherst in 1964, chairing the program for many years.  That program evolved into the neuroscience program, the first such program at a liberal arts college to be established and funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  Allen’s renowned series of courses for non-science majors on the topic of light and vision evolved from his research interest in the chemistry of vision.

On the occasion of Allen's last class in 1999, which was "Chemical Principles," Pat O'Hara, now the Amanda and Lisa Cross Professor of Chemistry, noted that "Allen was the architect of this class on thermodynamics and kinetics, departing from all textbooks and formulaic ways to teach thermodynamics.  In his hands, concepts of energy, disorder, and heat took on almost metaphysical meaning, and reflected a world view, not just a way of predicting chemical reactivity. He has taught all of us in the department to think critically and deeply about order and chaos.  It remains one of the most important courses that future science majors at the college take." Chemistry 161, the current day manifestation of this core chemistry course, still bears hallmarks of Allen's vision.

Allen began studying visual pigments as a postdoctoral fellow.  He collaborated with Ruth Hubbard, the first female tenured professor in the history of Harvard’s Department of Biology, to understand vision at a fundamental biochemical level. Their 1958 paper, titled “The Action of Light on Rhodospin,” represented a breakthrough and led others (including Ruth Hubbard's husband, George Wald) to Nobel Prizes in 1967.  Allen was a champion of women scientists at a time when this was unusual.  In addition to engaging in a partnership with Ruth Hubbard, he encouraged his wife, Rita Kropf, to pursue an advanced degree later in life.  The two later engaged in research together.  During his years at Amherst, Allen pursued research in the photochemistry of the visual process and helped initiate the study of artificial visual pigments by synthesizing and characterizing some of the first vitamin A analogues used in combination with visual proteins.

Professor David Hansen offered the following reflection: “I arrived at Amherst in 1986, and my senior colleague Allen quickly became an influential and beloved mentor.  In my very first semester at the college, I had the honor of attending all of his lectures in introductory chemistry, during which I saw for the first time what it truly means to teach chemistry as a liberal art.  When I was named the Julian H. Gibbs 1946 Professor of Chemistry in 2018, I was particularly touched, as Allen was the inaugural holder of this chair.  His legacy in the department holds strong.”  

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Spencer Williams ’24 (d. 2024)

Amherst College mourns the passing of Spencer Williams ’24 in January 2024.

Chief Student Affairs Officer and Dean of Students Angie Tissi-Gassoway wrote the following in a Jan. 24 email to the campus community:

... Spencer Williams '24 passed away this week after a challenging and heartbreaking battle with brain cancer. I had the honor to work with Spencer as his mentor in the Trans Connection Project, witnessing firsthand his passion, dedication, and positive impact on the community. His memory will forever remain an inspiration, and his absence will resonate deeply among all who were privileged to know him. On behalf of President Elliott, myself, and all who knew Spencer, I offer my deepest condolences to Spencer’s family, friends, and loved ones.

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Stanley J. Rabinowitz (d. 2024)

Amherst College mourns the passing of  Stanley J. Rabinowitz, the Henry Steele Commager Professor of Russian, Emeritus, in January 2024.

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a Jan. 23 email to faculty and staff:

No note of this kind, which by necessity must be brief, could do Stanley justice; renowned scholar, consummate teacher, and devoted colleague, he was a beloved member of the Amherst community for more than five decades.

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David W. Wills (1942-2024)

Amherst College mourns the passing of David Wills, the John E. Kirkpatrick 1951 Professor of Religion, Emeritus, on Jan. 18, 2024. 

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a Jan. 24 email to faculty and staff:

An accomplished scholar, beloved teacher and mentor, and active and engaged member of the faculty, David taught at Amherst for more than four decades.  At the time of David’s retirement in 2018, his colleagues in the Department of Religion wrote that they would miss his “wealth of knowledge, incisive and penetrating intelligence, persistence and thoroughness in all his doings, and his well-honed dry wit." For those who did not have the pleasure of knowing David personally, I think this description captures what a wonderful person he was.    David joined the Amherst faculty in 1972, after earning an A.B. degree, summa cum laude, in history from Yale; a B.D. degree from Princeton Theological Seminary; and a Ph.D. from Harvard in religion and society.  A highly productive scholar with a wide range of interests, he authored numerous articles, chapters, and books on subjects ranging from Christianity in America, to African American religious history, to persistent racial polarity in American religion and politics.  According to one of David’s favorite students, Laurie Maffly-Kipp ’82, Archer Alexander Distinguished Professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, “Intellectually, [David’s] lasting contribution was the insistence (now taken for granted) that race was one of the themes that shaped American history (and religious history) from its beginnings.”  In addition, beginning in the late 1980s, David and Professor Albert Raboteau at Princeton began the Afro-American (later African-American) Documentary History Project, which was funded by three major foundations over the years and headquartered in Amherst's Observatory building for the past several decades. This effort provided support for the work of many scholars and resulted in a collection of documents that span the fifteenth century to the present.    

During the course of his career, David taught courses ranging from American religious history and African-American religious history to religious ethics and the intersection of religion and politics.  While he considered the Department of Religion home, David also held positions in the Department of American Studies and the Department of Black Studies.  Beginning in 1979 and continuing for the next nine years, David also supervised the Luce Program in Comparative Religious Ethics, which brought eminent scholars to Amherst to teach with members in the department.  Reflecting on David’s many gifts as a scholar and teacher, Maria Heim, George Lyman Crosby 1896 and Stanley Warfield Crosby Professor in Religion, noted, “He had a remarkably capacious intellect and range of curiosity.  These he combined with a meticulous historical sensibility that excavated and remembered every detail as he painstakingly pieced together the many narratives of African-American religious history and the fundamental and wide-ranging ways they shape American life.  In the classroom, David was gentle but formidable as he required students to grapple with the historical conditions of their assumptions, while also insisting that they be prepared to live with the entailments of their commitments.”  

David served on numerous college committees over the course of his career, among them, the College Council, the Committee on Special Programs, and the Committee on Affirmative Action and Personnel Policy, all of which he chaired at various times. He was also renowned for his eloquence at faculty meetings. David's service to the profession was extensive; he assumed roles that included convenor of the Northeastern Seminar on Black Religion, intermittently, over two decades; one of the first co-chairpersons of the Afro-American Religious History Group of the American Academy of Religion; co-chair of the Working Group on Afro-American Religion and Politics at Harvard’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute, and associate editor of the Journal of Religious Ethics. He also delivered papers regularly on a range of subjects at institutions across the country for more than three decades.

Calling hours will be held at Douglass Funeral Home in Amherst, on Monday, January 29, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.  A memorial service, followed by a reception, will be held at Grace Episcopal Church, in Amherst, on Tuesday, January 30, at 11:00 a.m.  In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to The Hospice House of Fisher, in Amherst, in recognition of the loving care they provided to David in his final days.  David’s obituary can be found here.  

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Lawrence “Alan” Babb (d. 2023)

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.

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Peter Czap (d. 2023)

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.

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Nancy Higgins (d. 2023)

Amherst College mourns the passing of Nancy Higgins on Sept. 18, 2023. She came to the College as a reserve desk assistant in 1985 and moved to technical services in 1987. In 1991, she became a circulation assistant and worked in that position until her retirement in 2012.
 
An obituary will be linked on this page if and when it becomes available.

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Floyd S. Merritt '51 (1928–2023)

Amherst College mourns the passing of Floyd Merritt '51 on Aug. 2, 2023. In addition to being an Amherst alumnus, Merritt served over 25 years as the reference librarian in Frost Library. He retired in August 1994. 
 
Please see this obituary for more information.

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Richard Sholley Light (d. 2023)

Amherst College mourns the passing of Richard Sholley Light on Aug. 11, 2023. Light came to the College in 1971 as the audio-video specialist and was promoted to coordinator of AV services in 1987. He retired in 1992.
 
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Peter Pouncey (1937-2023)

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.

Martha Saxton (1945-2023)

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.

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Viktoria Schweitzer (d. 2023)

Amherst College mourns the passing of Viktoria Schweitzer on March 24, 2023.  Schweitzer came to the College in 1982 as a teaching associate in Russian and retired as a senior teaching associate in 1991. After retiring, she continued to teach at the College as a visiting lecturer until 2009.
 
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Peter Kaslauskas (1923-2023)

Amherst College mourns the passing of Peter Kaslauskas on May 13, 2023. Kaslaukas came to work at Amherst in 1947, as the custodian in what is now Hamilton dormitory, and worked in that capacity until 1973, when he became a painter / paper hanger / glazier, a position he held until his retirement in 1987.
 
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Patricia Holland (1940-2023)

Amherst College mourns the passing of Patricia Holland on April 4, 2023. Holland came to the College in 1996 as the managing editor of African American Religion: A Documentary History Project and worked in that position through her retirement in 2006.
 
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Betsy Chaisson (1940-2023)

Amherst College mourns the passing of Elizabeth "Betsy" Chaisson on April 13, 2023. Chaisson came to the College in 1980 and worked as an executive secretary to the registrar until 1982. She became an executive secretary in Development in 1984 and moved to the Dean of Students' Office in 1988. In 1994, Chaisson worked in the Registrar's office as an administrative assistant. She became the secretary to the president in 1996 and continued in that position through her retirement in 2010, working with presidents Tom Gerety and Tony Marx.
 
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