A. Hunter Dupree

A. Hunter Dupree, of Cambridge, Mass. and Squirrel Island, Me.; Nov. 30. He received his master’s from Harvard in 1947 and completed his doctoral thesis on the life and work of Asa Gray, the leading American botanist of the nineteenth century, in 1952 while teaching history at Texas Technological College. In 1953, he became a research fellow at the Gray Herbarium at Harvard to continue his work on Asa Gray. His planned biography was interrupted when the National Science Foundation selected him to lead a research project on the history of science in the federal government. Sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, his findings were published in the 1957 book Science in the Federal Government: a History of Policies and Activities to 1940. On completion of the book, he devoted more time to his research on Gray and in 1959 published Asa Gray, 1810-1888. He joined the history department at UC Berkeley in 1956. During his tenure at Berkeley, he held various administrative posts, including assistant to the Chancellor and director of the Bancroft Library. He was a firsthand witness to the Free Speech Movement of 1964. Throughout the 1960s he held numerous advisory posts with the federal government and scientific institutions. He was a member of the Library of Congress Committee, was a consultant to the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science and Public Policy (COSPUP), and drafted its report, Federal Support of Basic Research in Institutions of Higher Learning (1964). He was on the NASA Historical Advisory Committee and Atomic Energy Commission Historical Advisory Committee, and he also served on the House of Representatives panel on Science and Technology, where he gave advice on the role science and technology could play in addressing critical national and global problems. He became the George L. Littlefield Professor of History at Brown in 1968 and he began to write extensively on the social history of measurement. Later he served a year as one of the first group of fellows of the National Humanities Center. In the 1970s, he held positions in numerous professional organizations, including the Smithsonian Council (1975-85) and secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1973-76), where he had been elected a Fellow in 1967. He was an advisor to both the National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities and a trustee of the Museum of American Textile History (1978-89). He retired from Brown in 1981 yet remained active in academic life. He served as a consultant on the National Academy of Science’s committee on Government-Uni-
versity Relationships in Support of Science. He was Scholar in Residence at Southern Oregon State College in 1983 and Visiting Professor of the History of Science at the University of Minnesota in 1984. He was a member of the Research Advisory Committee for the National Air and Space Museum (1986). In recognition of his many professional achievements, he was the recipient of the New York Academy of Sciences President’s Award (1976) and the History of Science Society Sarton Medal (1990). He is survived by a daughter and son-in-law, a son and daughter-in-law, four grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.