The class has lost one of its most outstanding scholars. Robert Rehder died of a heart attack April 6, 2009, in Oxford, England, where he had been living and teaching since his retirement as professor of English and American literature at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Bob came to Princeton from Iowa. A member of Quadrangle Club and an editor of the Nassau Literary Magazine, he majored in Near Eastern Studies. After graduation, he studied in Paris and at the University of Tehran and then returned to Princeton to complete his doctorate in Oriental languages and literature.
Bob’s scholarship included published translations of the 14th-century Persian poet Hafiz and extensive work in French literature in addition to his teaching career. An insatiable reader with broad interests, he published books on Wordsworth, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Stephen Crane. At the time of his death he was planning books on Coleridge and Ezra Pound and was working on his third volume of poetry.
An inveterate traveler, Bob claimed to be the first to make a scientific collection of plants for Kew Gardens from the big deserts of eastern Iran. Though his professional life took him to France, Iran, Scotland, England, and Switzerland, he retained his attachment to his Princeton friends.
The class extends deepest sympathy to his wife, Caroline, and his children, John and Katherine.