Professor Emeritus Lauro Martines Passes Away

 Professor Emeritus Lauro Martines passed away last weekend in London at the age of 99.

He was born in Chicago, served in the U.S. Army from 1945-47, and was educated in the humanities at Harvard, where he received his Ph.D in 1960. He joined UCLA in 1966 after teaching at Reed College. He taught courses in Renaissance Italy, focusing on the history of Florence, until his retirement in 1992, when he moved to London. He also had visiting appointments at the Warburg Institute (University of London), the University of Washington, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). He published several important works on Renaissance Florence, but his research interests and publications extended beyond that into the field of English Renaissance poetry and later into the history of warfare in the early modern period. He also wrote fiction and collaborated with his wife, the writer Julia O’Fallon, on works of literary criticism.

The passing of Lauro Martines and Carlo Ginzburg in the same week reminds us of how fortunate we were to have both acclaimed scholars of the Renaissance on our faculty–two members of a formidable European field. We thank Geoffrey Symcox for his help in writing this announcement.