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September 16, 2004

Julius Rubin

Julius Rubin, 83, a Pitt professor of history for 27 years, died of respiratory failure on Sept. 9, 2004.

He came to Pitt’s Department of History in 1964, became a full professor in 1971 and retired in 1991 at age 70.

Rubin, known as “Julie” to his colleagues, was influential in forming the history department’s first faculty seminar. “Most departments were not highly organized in the late 1960s and 1970s,” according Seymour Drescher, University professor of history, who came to Pitt two years before Rubin.

“He always had some new idea or take on something,” Drescher said. “He would read voraciously and quickly. And he wanted people to discuss what they were studying.”

Rubin’s research interests included agricultural history in the U.S. South and North before the Civil War and the economic history of transportation.

After serving in the Merchant Marines at the end of World War II, he received his A.B. from Brooklyn College in 1950, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in history at Columbia University, where he was an assistant professor of history until 1964.

His first book “Canal or Railroad? Initiation and Innovation in Response to the Erie Canal in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston,” was published in 1961.

Until the mid-1960s, Rubin continued to publish articles on how transportation influenced economic development.

He focused on urbanization and regional development in the late 1960s, and then concentrated on agricultural history in the 1970s.

He came to Pitt in 1964 as an associate professor of history and economics, reuniting with one of his mentors, the late Carter Goodrich, then Mellon professor of history.

He taught a popular class at Pitt, Capitalism Versus Socialism, in the 1980s. “The topic was interesting to students,” said Van Beck Hall, associate professor of history. “And Julie treated his students like colleagues – a gentleman.”

Rubin engaged scholars from studies around the world. Informal discussion was one thing, but according to colleagues, Rubin wanted scholarly talks focused – a core analysis of historical questions — as he tried to make connections between scholars.

“Take a universal hypothesis — economic success and failure – and Rubin would pull the argument through all possible ways of analyzing the question from the economic to the social to the political and of course the intellectual,” Drescher said.

Not a flamboyant man, Rubin was described by colleagues as deliberate, analytical and hard headed.

He is survived by his wife Lore Rubin; daughters Toby Rubin and Erica Rubin; sister Evelyn Lieberman, and five grandchildren.

A memorial service is planned for Sept. 17, 3:30 p.m., at the Friends Meeting House, 4836 Ellsworth Ave.

Filed under: Feature,Volume 37 Issue 2

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