Cynthia Russett, the Larnard Professor of History at Yale University, died earlier this month in New Haven, Connecticut, after suffering from multiple myeloma. She was 76 years ago.
Professor Russett was a native of Pittsburgh but grew up in the Washington, D.C., area. She graduated from Trinity College in Washington and went on to earn a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in history at Yale University. At Yale, she won the George Washington Eggleston Prize for the best dissertation in American history.
Dr. Russett joined the faculty at Yale as a lecturer in 1967. She was promoted to full professor in 1990 and was named to the Larnard Professorship in 2002.
Professor Russett was the author of many books including Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood (Harvard University Press, 1989) and Darwin in America: The Intellectual Response, 1865-1912 (W. H. Freeman, 1976).