David Broder, AB’47, AM’51

Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist David Broder died on March 9, 2011. He was 81. At the University of Chicago, Broder earned his degrees in political science and was an editor of the Chicago Maroon. He went on to have a storied career in journalism. President Barack Obama said Broder “built a well-deserved reputation as the most respected and incisive political commentator of his generation.”  Before joining the Washington Post in 1966, Broder covered national politics for the New York Times, the Washington Star, and Congressional Quarterly. At the Post, he was the national political correspondent, with a twice-weekly column on American political life that was syndicated in more than 300 newspapers around the world. In addition, millions of television viewers watched Broder’s regular appearances on NBC’s Meet the Press and CNN’s Inside Politics. His work earned the 1973 Pulitzer Prize in journalism for distinguished commentary.  A frequent visitor to the University of Chicago campus, Broder received the Alumni Medal in 2005. He was recognized for mentoring young journalists, many of them fellow UChicago graduates. Broder met his wife, Ann C. Broder, AB’48, AM’51 (English), while in the College. Their son Michael earned his MBA from Booth in 1991.   

Charles Montgomery Gray

Charles Montgomery Gray, a leading scholar of legal history and a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, died Friday, April 22, at the University’s Bernard Mitchell Hospital. He was 82. He was the author of Hugh Latimer and the Sixteenth Century (Harvard University Press, 1950); Copyhold, Equity, and the Common Law (Harvard University Press, 1963); and Renaissance and Reformation England(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).  He was the husband of Hanna H. Gray, president emeritus of the University, who is the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History. The Grays were married in 1954 after meeting in a seminar at Harvard University.  “Charles is already sorely missed,” said Neil Harris, the Preston and Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus of History, who described Gray as “a major presence” in the life of the University as well as “an extraordinary person—learned, individualistic, gracious, cordial, and a wonderful friend.”  Kathleen Neils Conzen, the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of American History, praised Gray as “a wonderfully generous departmental colleague and always a voice of reason and civility in departmental discussions.”  “He offered an imaginative range of courses in medieval British history, history of law, and history of legal theory,” Conzen said, “but it was his role as ‘Western Civ. Teacher’ that he once described as the persona ‘that has almost become the center of my life.’”  Gray was named professor of history in 1978 after serving on the faculty at Yale University from 1974 to 1978 and previously at UChicago from 1960 to 1972. He also served as master of the New Collegiate Division and associate dean of the College.  He was a Guggenheim fellow from 1965 to 1966, and he held fellowships with the American Council of Learned Societies and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He and Mrs. Gray served as coeditors of the Journal of Modern History for five years.  In addition to being a distinguished researcher, Gray was an outstanding teacher. In 1992, he received the University’s top award for undergraduate teaching, the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award.  He taught courses in Western civilization, medieval and early modern English history, and the history of English and European law, jurisprudence, and political theory. He also taught courses in Fundamentals: Issues and Texts, a program in the College.  Gray received an AB summa cum laude from Harvard in 1949, was a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and received his PhD from Harvard in 1956. He was a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1956 to 1960.   

Yi-Chuang Lu, AM’42, PhD’50

Yi-chuang Lu died on December 25, 2010. She was 97. Born in China, Lu received her BA from Yenching University in Beijing in 1935 and went on to earn two graduate degrees from the University of Chicago: a master’s from the School of Social Service Administration and a PhD in sociology.  Lu served as a social worker at the Department of Neuropsychiatry, Peking Union Medical College, and as supervising sociologist at Manteno State Hospital in Illinois before teaching at the University of Chicago from 1968 to 1988. She retired in 1989.  At the University, Lu met her husband, Tang Tsou, the Homer J. Livingston Professor Emeritus of Political Science. He died in 1999 at the age of 80.   

David Pearl, AM’48, PhD’50

David Pearl, an alumnus of the Department of Psychology, died on February 23, 2011. He was 90. Pearl worked as a scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health; in 1982 he issued a government report about links between violence on television and aggressive behavior in children. The Washington Post published an obituary.