Robert Nozick *63

Robert Nozick died of stomach cancer on Jan. 23, 2002, in Cambridge, Mass. He was 63.

Nozick, one of the nation's most influential philosophers, was the Joseph Pellegrino U. professor at Harvard, a position awarded to distinguished individuals whose path-breaking work crosses the boundaries of different disciplines. Nozick wrote Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974); Philosophical Explanations (1981); The Examined Life (1989); The Nature of Rationality (1993); and Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (2001). Anarchy, State, and Utopia won the National Book Award and was named by the Times Literary Supplement as one of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the War."

Nozick was raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., and received his A.B. from Columbia College. A former member of the radical left who was converted to a libertarian perspective as a graduate student, he was never comfortable being referred to as an ideologue. He was the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association in 1998, which described him as "one of the most brilliant and original living philosophers."

He is survived by his wife, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, and his two children, Emily and David.

The Graduate School