Lutz K. Berkner ’64

Lutz, who died of lung cancer Jan. 16, 2011, was born to Hans and Sigrid Berkner in Dessau, Germany, during, as he wrote in his hilariously deadpan Nassau Herald biographical sketch, “an air raid and has been suffering from shellshock ever since.”

Nonetheless he excelled at Stratford (Conn.) High School and was an early concentrator in history at Princeton, where he wrote his thesis for Professor Lawrence Stone on “Educational and Social Thought in 18th-Century France.” He did this even though he “spent … his senior year in Philadelphia,” winning the favor of a Penn student named Dimi Strangeways, who would become his wife of 46 years.

Lutz received a Ph.D. in history from Harvard and taught for several years at UCLA before becoming an educational researcher in New Jersey — the Berkners lived in Princeton for 17 years — and later California. He was nationally esteemed for his statistical studies of college students: who went to college, how they did when they got there, and what sort of financial aid they received. As one leading education policymaker wrote, “He was, for all purposes, the guru of student pathways in higher education.”

The class extends condolences to Dimi; their children, Laurie and Chris; and grandchildren, Lucy and Violet.