LEXINGTON, Mass. (AP) – Franklin L. Ford, a Harvard University historian and dean of the faculty of arts and sciences during the tumultuous 1960s, has died. He was 82.
Ford died Sunday at a retirement facility. He had suffered from poor health following a stroke, according to a statement by Harvard.
Ford, who was McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, defied a movement toward increasing specialization, said William C. Kirby, a former student of Ford and the current dean of the faculty.
“Franklin Ford was a man of enormous learning and great humility,” Kirby said. “He was a man of scholarship and of the world … he gave his faculty principled leadership in an era of great turbulence.”
Born in Waukegan, Ill., in 1920, Ford was an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota.
During World War II, he served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Office of Stategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA. He drew on that experience for one of his first major articles, on the history of the German resistance.
Ford received tenure at Harvard as an associate professor in 1956 and was dean of the faculty of arts and sciences from 1962 to 1970. He gained emeritus status in 1991.
As dean he helped reshape the undergraduate curriculum and oversaw a period of physical expansion, including the construction of the university’s science center.
His books ranged from studies of the French aristocracy after Louis XIV to a history of political homicide.
Ford is survived by his wife of 59 years, Eleanor R. Ford; his sisters Frances Ford and Florence Dart of Catonsville, Md.; his sons John Franklin Ford and Stephen Joseph Ford; and a granddaughter.
A memorial service will be held at Harvard in the fall, the school said.
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