| 1 | Name: | Dr. Richard Herr | |
| Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | ||
| Year Elected: | 1993 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1922 | ||
| Death Date: | May 29, 2022 | ||
Richard Herr spent his first ten years in Mexico, the son of an American mining engineer. After his family moved to Cincinnati, he attended Walnut Hills High School there and went to Harvard University for an A.B. in history (1943). He served in the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Corps in Europe, 1943-45, enjoying being stationed in London and then in Paris. At the end of the war he remained in France in order to attend the Sorbonne for a year. While there he married Elena Fernández Mel, a refugee from the Spanish Civil War. They have two sons, Charles and Winship. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1966. In 1968 he married Valerie Shaw. They have two daughters, Sarah and Jane. Dr. Herr prepared a Ph.D. in history at the University of Chicago (1954). From 1952-59 he was a junior faculty member at Yale University, and after 1960 an associate and later full professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. He retired in 1991, becoming professor of history emeritus. A specialist on the history of France and Spain in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Dr. Herr has spent a number of years in both countries. One of his works is a critical study of Alexis de Tocqueville as a historian. His early research was on the impact of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution on Spanish thought and politics. This subject led him into the evolution of Spanish agriculture at the end of the Old Regime, and he taught and wrote on the agricultural revolution in Europe. His recent work deals with the evolution of individualism and community spirit in the Western world since the eighteenth century, an outgrowth of his continuing interest in the significance of the Enlightenment. | |||