Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, the William Benton Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago died in Oakland, California, on December 23. She was 85 years old and had suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
Professor Rudolph was a native of Germany and immigrated to the United States just before the outbreak of World War II. The family settled in Philadelphia. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, and a Ph.D. at Harvard University. At Harvard she met her husband Lloyd Rudolph who became her academic colleague in the study of India.
The Rudolphs authored a number of books on India including The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (University of Chicago Press, 1968), Education and Politics in India (Harvard University Press, 1972), and the three-volume set Explaining Indian Democracy: A Fifty Year Perspective 1956-2006 (Oxford University Press, 2008).