A Tribute to Loren Graham (1933-2024)

Below is a summary of a longer memorial written by Mark Kramer, director of the Davis Center’s Cold War Studies program. The full text is included directly below the summary.

Loren R. Graham, a long-time associate of the Davis Center and one of the world’s foremost experts on the history of science and technology in Russia and the Soviet Union, died on Dec. 15, 2024, after a brief illness. He was 91.

Loren was born and raised in Indiana and attended Purdue University, receiving an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering in 1955. He then worked as a chemical engineer at the Dow Chemical plant in Midland, MI, where he soon decided that he did not want to devote his career to engineering. After a three-year stint in the U.S. Navy as a communications and intelligence officer, including deployments on warships during some of the tensest moments in the Cold War, he decided to pursue graduate studies in history, with an emphasis on the history of scientific and technological advances. He learned both Russian and French as a graduate student at Columbia, where he received a master’s degree in history and a certificate in Russian studies from the university’s Russian Institute (today's Harriman Institute) and then completed his Ph.D. in history in 1964. As part of his graduate research, Loren made his first trip to the Soviet Union in 1960-1961, when he was among the initial cohorts of U.S. graduate students and scholars included in the academic exchange program between the U.S. and the USSR that developed as a result of East-West détente.

Loren returned to Indiana for three years, accepting a teaching position in history at Indiana University before going back, in 1967, to Columbia as professor of history with a joint appointment at the university’s Russian Institute. In 1978, Loren moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he spent the rest of his academic career. Until his retirement some 35 years later, Loren held joint senior faculty posts in the history of science at both MIT and Harvard. For 46 years, he was associated with Harvard’s Russian Research Center (now the Davis Center) in various capacities, including many years on the center’s Executive Committee and one year (1995-1996) as the center’s acting director.

Loren was the author of 20 books and dozens of articles, mostly on the history, politics, and culture of science and technology in imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, and post-Soviet Russia. In his writing, Loren discussed the historical, political, and cultural dimensions of the Soviet experience with science, addressing questions that were taboo for scholars in the USSR itself. In the process, he was able to shed light on crucial features of the Soviet system, going well beyond science. His books included The Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Communist Party, 1927-1932 (Princeton University Press, 1967), Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Lysenko’s Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia (Harvard University Press, 2016), and Lonely Ideas: Can Russia Compete? (MIT Press, 2013).

Loren was dedicated to reaching beyond specialist circles when discussing topics related to his own expertise and general love of history. Much as he valued the opportunity to produce state-of-the-art scholarship, he also felt it was important to offer narratives suitable for the wider public. In 1986, Loren was closely involved in putting together the documentary “How Good Is Soviet Science?” for the NOVA science program. He served as on-screen narrator, examining the status of science and technology in the USSR and the potential for change under Gorbachev. His Moscow Stories (Indiana University Press, 2006), a collection of anecdotes and reflections on his experiences in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia over 45 years, conveys a deep admiration for Russian culture and great respect for ordinary Russians.

Loren was married to Patricia (Pat) Albjerg Graham for nearly 70 years. Pat also received her Ph.D. in history from Columbia (focusing on the history of U.S. public education) and went on to become a highly acclaimed professor of education and senior administrator at Columbia, Princeton, and Harvard, where she served as dean of both the Radcliffe Institute and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Loren described the day that Pat was announced as the first female dean of a Harvard college as “the proudest day of my life.”

Loren and Pat spent a lot of time on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, specifically Grand Island, on the south shore of Lake Superior. In 1972 they bought the abandoned North Light Station and repaired and rebuilt the site; thanks to their efforts North Light Station was formally included in the National Registry of Historic Places in 1985.

As a scholar and part-time resident, Loren delved into the history of Grand Island and eventually published two books about the island and its history — A Face in the Rock: The Tale of a Grand Island Chippewa (University of California Press, 1995) and Death at the Lighthouse: A Grand Island Riddle (Arbutus Press, 2013). He also contributed to a 300-page guide entitled Grand Island and Its Families, 1883-2007 (Grand Island Association, 2007). Their time on the island also led them to collect a large set of antique prints, paintings, and photographs of lighthouses from around the world, which they later donated to the National Lighthouse Museum on Staten Island, New York, in 2018.

Loren received many awards and accolades during his academic career, including the George Sarton Medal from the History of Science Society for “a lifetime of scholarly achievement” in 1996. Despite his many accomplishments, he remained a remarkably humble, down-to-earth, amiable, generous, and kind-hearted person until the end of his life. He was revered by his many graduate students over the years, was a beloved fixture at the Davis Center, and was equally treasured at MIT, Columbia, and beyond. Everywhere he worked, he was a voice of reason and calm, a fount of penetrating insights, and a person of great integrity and good humor. He will be missed.

A Tribute to Loren Graham (1933-2024): Full Text
Mark Kramer

Loren R. Graham, a long-time associate of Harvard University’s Davis Center (formerly the Russian Research Center) and one of the world’s foremost experts on the history of science and technology in Russia and the Soviet Union, died on Dec. 15, 2024, after a brief illness. He was 91.

Loren was born and grew up in Indiana and attended Purdue University as an undergraduate, receiving a degree in chemical engineering from the university in 1955. He then lived briefly in Michigan working as a chemical engineering research scientist at the Dow Chemical plant in Midland. Although he liked the scientific research, he soon realized that he did not want to be an engineer his whole career. After serving a three-year stint in the U.S. Navy as a communications and intelligence officer, including deployments on warships during some of the tensest moments in the Cold War, he pondered his options and decided to pursue graduate studies in history at Columbia University, with an emphasis on the history of scientific and technological advances.

An important event that occurred when Loren was still in the Navy influenced his decision at Columbia to focus on the way science was done in the USSR. In October 1957 the Soviet Union became the first country to launch a satellite (Sputnik I) into outer space — a milestone that caused widespread concern in the United States among journalists, public officials, and ordinary citizens, who feared that the USSR had gained a significant technological lead over the West. The launch of Sputnik resulted in a flurry of encrypted communications aboard Loren’s naval vessel in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and he had to decode the traffic as quickly as possible for the ship’s commanders. He himself was unnerved by the Soviet Union’s dramatic breakthrough, and he later recalled that this was part of the reason he decided to study the history of science in imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. He ended up learning both Russian and French as a graduate student at Columbia, where he received a master’s degree in history and a certificate in Russian studies from the university’s Russian Institute (today's Harriman Institute). He completed his Ph.D. degree in history at Columbia in 1964. 

Loren then returned to his home state to take up a faculty post in history at Indiana University for three years. In 1967 he went back to Columbia to become a professor of history, along with a joint appointment at the Russian Institute. Columbia was in turmoil by the time Loren returned, and it became even more turbulent over the next several years, especially in 1968, when students engaged in rampant violence and caused mass disruption of campus life. Loren found the experience “jarring” and “traumatic.” Even though he thought some of the grievances voiced by the protesters were legitimate, he detested the violence and vandalism. He took part in a group of politically moderate faculty who tried to bring the situation under control, but their efforts were spurned by radical leftwing students. Loren’s faculty colleagues later recalled that he had remained “calm and good-natured” even when “everyone else kept going nuts.” 

In 1978, Loren moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he spent the rest of his academic career. Until his retirement some 35 years later, Loren held joint senior faculty posts in the history of science at both MIT and Harvard. For 46 years, he was associated with Harvard’s Russian Research Center (now the Davis Center) in various capacities, including many years on the center’s Executive Committee and one year (1995-1996) as the center’s acting director.

Loren was the author of 20 books and dozens of articles, mostly on the history, politics, and culture of science and technology in imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, and post-Soviet Russia. Among his many well-known works is the first book he published, The Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Communist Party, 1927-1932, which came out from Princeton University Press in 1967. The book, a revised version of Loren’s doctoral dissertation, is based on research he did in the USSR in the early 1960s. He made his first trip to the Soviet Union near the start of his graduate work in 1960-1961, when he was among the initial cohorts of U.S. graduate students and scholars included in the academic exchange program that had been officially set up between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1958 as a byproduct of East-West détente. He spent much of that year-long exchange conducting preliminary research and gauging what would be feasible. Surrounded by Russian-speakers, he gained an impressive degree of fluency in the language and formed valuable contacts and friendships with scholars in Moscow, many of whom shared Loren’s determination to overcome the maddening obstacles often imposed by the Soviet regime.

In a follow-up visit to the USSR in 1963, Loren requested, but was denied, access to archives holding materials relating to the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Soviet Communist Party. He did his best to gather published items, memoirs, unpublished manuscripts and surveys, and testimony from interviews he conducted with Soviet scientists and scholars. His book on the Soviet Academy, like his doctoral dissertation, covered roughly the years of the USSR’s first five-year plan under Joseph Stalin, when the Bolsheviks reshaped scholarly institutions to fulfill the demands of a Marxist-Leninist regime committed to the “scientific” transformation of social and economic structures, often through brutal violence. In the book, as in subsequent works over several decades, Loren discussed the historical, political, and cultural dimensions of the Soviet experience with science, addressing questions that were taboo for scholars in the USSR itself. In the process, he was able to shed light on crucial features of the Soviet system, going well beyond science.

Some of Loren’s books looked in-depth at the lives and legacies of individual scientists in Russia and the Soviet Union, whereas other of his publications provided broad surveys of scientific activities and intellectual life in the USSR. Loren highlighted the repressive and counterproductive aspects of the Soviet system and the obstacles that Soviet scientists often faced when trying to pursue their work, but he also tried to develop an empathetic understanding of the way Soviet scientists and bureaucrats behaved and their reasons for doing so. In a lengthy book published in 1972, Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (Alfred A. Knopf), Loren sought to explain how the USSR’s officially approved framework of dialectical materialism had influenced the way Soviet scientists approached key fields, including quantum mechanics, relativity theory, cosmology and cosmogony, genetics, the origin of life, structural chemistry, cybernetics, and physiology and psychology. He found that, although the precepts of dialectical materialism in the USSR were often inimical to sound research and at times highly destructive, many Soviet scientists were willing to embrace the framework and even try using it to their advantage. Some scholars who reviewed the book cast doubt on Loren’s depiction of the role of Marxist-Leninist ideology in Soviet scientific achievements and challenged his definitions. Yet, even those who were critical acknowledged the clarity and erudition of the book, describing it as “a monumental contribution to our understanding of intellectual life in the Soviet Union’ and “a scholarly tour de force.”

Loren put out an expanded and revised version of the book in 1987 under a slightly different title, Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union, published by Columbia University Press. The second edition contains two chapters that did not appear in the original and includes rich discussion of numerous Soviet scientists who were not mentioned in the 1972 edition. Both of the additional chapters deal with human behavior (a topic left out of the first edition), which accounts for the alteration in the title. Especially interesting is a new chapter on the nature-nurture debate in the Soviet Union. This chapter shows that, by the 1970s and 1980s, the relative weight given by Soviet scientists to nature had markedly increased compared to the 1930s and 1940s. Even so, interference by high-ranking Soviet Communist officials in favor of nurture began cropping up again in the early 1980s. The renewed political interference was not aimed at rehabilitating Trofim Lysenko, whose baleful influence undercut the whole field of genetics in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, but it did put at least a temporary chill on the more free-flowing debate that had gradually emerged after the discrediting of Lysenko in the mid-1960s.

Loren’s chapter on genetics in both editions of the book presented a concise overview of the Lysenko affair under Stalin and its long-term consequences. The topic of Lysenkoism also came up at least briefly in many of Loren’s other publications. Most important of all was the book he published many years later, in 2016, Lysenko’s Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia (Harvard University Press), which explored the strange nostalgia for Lysenko that began emerging in post-Soviet Russia under Vladimir Putin. This change of sentiment stemmed mainly from the chauvinistic “patriotic” ethos that Putin encouraged, especially in the wake of Russia’s military incursions into Ukraine in 2014. Although Russian journalists and nationalist demagogues occasionally pointed to scientific findings (epigenetics in biology) that lent a modicum of credence to notions of the inheritability of acquired characteristics, Loren demonstrated that Lysenko’s anti-Mendelian agricultural theories and techniques had nothing to do with epigenetics and were based on scientifically invalid concepts and methods. Loren readily acknowledged that developments in the field of epigenetics warranted consideration of the prospect of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (the carry-over of acquired characteristics), but he emphasized that epigenetic changes did not entail any alteration in the underlying DNA gene sequence and were reversible. Hence, far from vindicating Lysenko and the contrived experiments he carried out with wheat and other grains, epigenetic research showed that a scientifically valid approach to the topic produced findings at odds with his claims. Russian demagogues in the 21st century who were trying to salvage Lysenko’s reputation were defending an incompetent pseudo-scientist who exploited his political connections to seek grisly retribution against those he believed were standing in his way. Loren’s book meticulously explains why Lysenko deserves the ignominy that has long surrounded him.

For non-specialists, Loren included a crisp, up-to-date chapter dealing with the Lysenko affair in his broad survey book Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History, published by Cambridge University Press in 1993. The book, appearing shortly after the disintegration of the USSR, covers a great deal in only 321 pages. The main text, discussing more than two centuries of scientific and technological research in roughly 200 pages, is divided into three sections of roughly equal length: (1) the period before 1917, (2) the early Soviet and Stalinist years (including the Lysenko debacle), and (3) the post-Stalin period and the impact of science on Soviet society (and vice versa). The main text is followed by 60 pages of illuminating appendices on the “strengths and weaknesses of Russian and Soviet science” (in physics, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, earth and atmospheric sciences, biology, medicine, and technology, especially space technology); 30 pages of endnotes; and a superb, 25-page bibliographic essay. More than three decades after the book was published, it remains the best introduction for general readers to the history of imperial Russian and Soviet science, and it is also a wonderful primer for experts.

The publication of Science in Russian and Soviet History reflected Loren’s dedication to reaching beyond specialist circles when discussing topics related to his own expertise and his general love of history. Much as he valued the opportunity to produce state-of-the-art scholarship, he also felt it was important to offer a basic narrative suitable for the wider public. In 1986, during the early phase of the remarkable period in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, Loren was closely involved in putting together the documentary “How Good Is Soviet Science?” for the NOVA science program on public television. He served as on-screen narrator, examining the status of science and technology in the USSR and the potential for change under the dynamic new Soviet leader. When interviewing Soviet scientists and public officials on air (in fluent Russian), Loren was respectful throughout.  Even when his interlocutors responded with stale propaganda or obvious falsehoods, he remained polite and merely voiced a friendly note of skepticism. The final documentary was broadcast in November 1987. 

Anyone watching the NOVA program (and millions did) would have gained a first-rate understanding of the many barriers to systemic change in the USSR, including in branches of science and technology that were vital for Gorbachev’s economic reform agenda. Events in subsequent years underscored the prescience of Loren’s film in analyzing the daunting obstacles facing reform-minded scientists who sought to overcome the hidebound structures of the Soviet Academy.

After the Soviet Union broke apart, Loren took a keen interest in the fate of scientists who had been part of (or were about to enter) the USSR’s scientific and technological community. He wrote several books and many articles discussing how Russian and Ukrainian scientists were adjusting to the economic and social dislocation of the late Soviet and post-Soviet years. He and his co-researchers documented the sharp cuts in research funding and the “brain drain” that took place in the former USSR, and he showed how the drawbacks of the old Soviet Academy of Sciences system — the separation of research from teaching, the separation of basic research from applied research, and the dearth of meaningful peer review — carried over into the post-Soviet era. Numerous attempts at far-reaching reforms proposed by younger scholars were vetoed at high levels.

Loren approached the matter not only as a scholar but as a compassionate human being. He went to great lengths to support individual scientists in Russia and Ukraine as they embarked on unfamiliar tasks in the early post-Soviet era (e.g., competitive applications for foreign grants), and he also played a central role in encouraging the International Science Foundation set up by George Soros, as well as other U.S. grant-making foundations, notably the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation, to provide emergency funding for up-and-coming scientists and scientific programs in the former USSR that otherwise would have ceased to exist. Tens of thousands of scientists in Russia and Ukraine received vital assistance through these efforts.

In early 1998, Loren published a short book with Stanford University Press, What Have We Learned About Science and Technology From the Russian Experience? The book consists of well-honed essays elaborating on the themes of Loren’s five lectures in the Donald M. Kendall series at Stanford in 1995: (1) whether science is a social construction, (2) whether science and technology are Westernizing influences, (3) the robustness of science under stress, (4) the willingness of scientists to reform their own institutions, and (5) the appropriate means of controlling technology. Drawing on his many years of study of science and technology in the USSR, Loren argued that social constructivism had some merits but also major limitations when applied to the Soviet experience with science. He maintained that science could indeed often make headway under extreme stress, as when Soviet scientists achieved great strides in mathematics, physics, chemistry, seismology, geology, and other fields during the height of the Stalinist terror, even though large numbers of scientists and engineers were among those being arrested and put to death. Biological sciences were severely disrupted by Lysenko, but the assault on genetics and geneticists had surprisingly little impact in most other fields. The USSR lagged far behind the West in computer science and computing technology, but Soviet scientists devised work-arounds to make up for the shortfalls. Summing up what he saw as the lessons one might draw from the history of science in the USSR, Loren warned that it would be misguided to assume that authoritarian countries will automatically fall behind in scientific and technological achievements. Democracy, freedom, and human rights, he argued, are immensely valuable on ethical grounds, but they are not always needed for scientific progress, as the Soviet experience illustrates. The book thus offers invaluable guidance for U.S. policymakers as they confront threats from China’s tyrannical regime in the 21st century.

Like many Western scholars who had been delighted in the 1990s by the opportunity to establish cooperative ties with counterparts in the former USSR, Loren was disappointed when the Russian government under Putin began clamping down on links with Western scholars. During the quarter century in which Putin has been the dominant leader in Moscow, Russia has moved back to a repressive authoritarian system, with a distinctly xenophobic tinge. This trend became especially pernicious after Putin embarked on his third term as president in 2012 and consolidated a personalistic dictatorship. The adoption of “foreign agent” laws and the prosecution of Russian scientists on spurious charges of treason and espionage led to the termination of scores of formal joint projects involving Russian and Western scientists by 2015 and the elimination of all others by 2020. 

Loren was dismayed by this turn of events in Russia, which undid all the promising gains of the 1990s. Although Putin was the one driving the xenophobic retrenchment, Loren regretted that prominent Russian scientists did not do more to resist the clampdown. Rather than defending colleagues who came under baseless attack from Russia’s security apparatus, influential figures in the Russian Academy of Sciences kept silent and acquiesced in (or even abetted) these malevolent exercises of state power — a pattern that Loren said reminded him of “the infamous letter in 1973 from the Soviet Academy of Sciences denouncing [Andrei] Sakharov” at the behest of the Soviet state.

The reversion to autocracy in Russia during Putin’s long reign was already under way when Loren published his book Moscow Stories with Indiana University Press in 2006. The book, a collection of anecdotes and reflections on some of the experiences Loren had in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia over 45 years, conveys a deep admiration for Russian culture and great respect for ordinary Russians he met over the years as they sought to cope with daily challenges. The book starts by briefly tying Loren’s upbringing in rural Indiana to his subsequent career and then provides insightful depictions of Soviet and Russian scientists and scholars whom he encountered in Moscow and elsewhere, along with astute character sketches of Russian friends of his who later became well-known, powerful figures (above all Alexander Yakovlev). The book also includes a strangely discordant story about a Dutch-born MIT professor who died in 2000 at age 106, having remained a lifelong Communist and ardent defender of Stalin’s worst atrocities, presumably because he was living far away in the comfort of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In a section of “Afterthoughts” at the end of the book, Loren expressed forebodings about where Russia was heading under Putin. When I asked Loren about this final section nearly 20 years later (a month before he died), he said, “Oh, the situation is much worse now than I had anticipated in 2005, much worse. Ominous signs were already evident back then, but did I anticipate that a militaristic dictatorship in the Kremlin would embark on a calamitous war of aggression and that tens of millions of Russians would support it, at least passively? No, this is much worse than I had feared.”

A book Loren published in 2013 with MIT Press — Lonely Ideas: Can Russia Compete? — returned to the theme he had discussed in his 1986-1987 documentary for the NOVA science program. In 1986 he was weighing the prospects for success of Mikhail Gorbachev’s bold new reform program in the Soviet Union. A quarter century later, in Lonely Ideas, he was seeking to explain why the USSR and post-Soviet Russia kept falling short in their attempts to modernize. Russia, he noted, had long been at the forefront of scientific thought, but it had been “abysmal” in turning ideas into usable technologies and “miserable” in innovation. Many of the problems, he maintained, stem directly from the warped nature of Soviet industrialization, which left Russia “saddled with an industrial system and a population distribution that were so distorted by central fiat during the Soviet period that they are major obstacles to true modernization today.” The weaknesses produced by this “grossly inefficient production infrastructure” have markedly increased during the Putin era, and they have intensified further as a result of Russia’s prolonged war against Ukraine. In the absence of freedom of speech, geographic mobility, economic transparency, judicial independence, the protection of private property rights, and the enforcement of contracts, it is hard to see how Russia can “create an economic and political order in which investors are not only numerous, but willing to take risks on developing novel ideas’ into profitable technologies. Deeply researched and tightly argued, Lonely Ideas emphasizes that the obstacles to technological prowess in Russia will remain a huge burden on the country’s economic standing.

Even though Loren traveled widely in the world and spent many years living in New York City and Cambridge, he remained keenly interested in his native Midwest. Part of the reason is that Loren’s wife, Patricia (Pat) Albjerg Graham, was also from Indiana and was a classmate at Purdue, where her father was one of Loren’s professors. She, like Loren, received her Ph.D. in history from Columbia (focusing on the history of U.S. public education), and she went on to become a highly acclaimed professor of education and a senior administrator at Columbia, Princeton University, and Harvard. In 1974, when Pat and Loren were professors at Columbia, she was appointed dean of Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute and a professor of the history of education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Her move to Cambridge was one of the major reasons that Loren shifted from Columbia to MIT in 1978. He had been willing to commute between New York and Cambridge for four years but said the opportunity to “get the family back together” in a single city was “a tremendous bonus” he would gain by taking up a post at MIT. In 1982, four years after Loren moved to Cambridge, Pat was appointed dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, the first woman to serve as the dean of a whole school at Harvard. Many years later, Loren recalled that the day Pat was appointed dean “was the proudest day of my life,” rivaled only by the day in June 2015 when she received an honorary doctorate degree from Harvard.

Throughout their nearly 70-year marriage, Loren and Pat retained close ties to the Midwest. Although they were natives of Indiana, they became especially attached to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula because of Grand Island, a plot of land measuring 57 square kilometers off the south shore of Lake Superior, which Pat’s grandparents had begun visiting in the 19th century. In 1954, Loren traveled with Pat to Grand Island for the first time and was captivated by the idyllic scenery. Over the next 65 years they visited the island every summer. In 1972 they even bought an abandoned lighthouse, known as North Light Station, on Grand Island atop a remote cliff looming high above Lake Superior. Over the next few years, the Grahams extensively repaired and rebuilt the decrepit site, converting it into a comfortable private summer home adjacent to the highest-altitude lighthouse in the United States. In subsequent years, they used it every summer.

If Loren and Pat had not purchased and repaired North Light Station, the historic site would have continued to fall apart. No lighthouse keeper or assistant keeper had been present at the facility after the light was automated in 1941. The federal government boarded up the station’s buildings and formally left them as abandoned property in 1961. But thanks to the Grahams’ efforts to bring the site back to life, North Light Station was restored and formally included in the National Registry of Historic Places in 1985. Because of the remoteness of the house, it was never equipped with electricity and running water or an indoor bathroom. Lights in the residence were battery- and kerosene-operated, and the heating system was based on a wood-burning stove and large fireplace. Water came from a windlass well in a shed outside the summer house, supplemented by a large brick-arched cistern that provided drinking water as well as water for bathing and flushing the toilet in a nearby outhouse. Isolated and quiet and surrounded by majestic vistas of the forested shorelines of Lake Superior, North Station was an ideal place for Loren and Pat to spend summers reading, writing, and enjoying nature without the interruptions of Cambridge.

As a scholar and part-time resident of Grand Island, Loren delved into the history of the island, the North Station lighthouse, and the southern Lake Superior region. He eventually published two books about Grand Island, and he also worked with Katherine Geffine Carlson to compile a 300-page guide titled Grand Island and Its Families, 1883-2007, which was put out by the Grand Island Association in 2007. Loren’s first book about Grand Island, A Face in the Rock: The Tale of a Grand Island Chippewa (published by the University of California Press in 1995), traced the history of the small community of Chippewa (Ojibwe) Indians who lived on Grand Island in the late 18th and 19th centuries and then disappeared from the island by the early 20th century. The book shows that the story was more complicated than one might expect, involving schisms between the island Chippewa and the much larger group of mainland Chippewa, rivalries and eventual warfare between the Chippewa and Sioux, and pressure exerted by the U.S. government that intensified hostility between the rival tribes. Loren readily acknowledged that records on these matters were not always reliable and that conflicting sources necessitated some degree of “imaginative history,” rather than the strictly “authentic history” he was accustomed to producing. The book lays out the sad tale of how the Chippewa community on Grand Island disappeared, but it ends by recounting more positive developments in the late 20th century with the rejuvenation of the island and the revival of Chippewa culture and language throughout the region.

Loren’s next book about Grand Island, published by Arbutus Press in 2013, focuses on a mysterious but long forgotten event in the history of the North Light Station. Loren began working on Death at the Lighthouse: A Grand Island Riddle shortly after he and Pat moved into the summer home. When repairing the kitchen table, Loren had discovered a faded Detroit Free Press newspaper clipping from June 15, 1908, that was stuck under an oil cloth. The headline, “Grand Island Lighthouse Keeper and His Assistant Believed to Be Victims of Brutal Murder and Robbery,” caught his eye and spurred him to try over the next 35 years to pin down what had happened. The newspaper article described how the severely bludgeoned body of Edward S. Morrison, the North Light Station’s assistant lighthouse keeper, had been found in a boat near Au Point Sable (a nearby lighthouse on the south shore of Lake Superior) a few days earlier. Morrison’s head was “disfigured beyond all recognition,” but a distinctive 13-star tattoo on his left arm allowed his body to be identified. The North Light Station lighthouse had been dark for the previous week, and investigators determined that the lighthouse keeper, George Genry, had gone into town on the station’s boat to buy supplies at the start of that week. The supplies Genry purchased had been left on the dock, and his coat and vest were inside the lighthouse, but there was no sign of him. The boat’s logbook showed that Genry and Morrison had signed their final notations on the 5th and 6th of June, but these gave no indication of what had happened to the two men.

Building on the rudimentary details in press coverage and exiguous police records, Loren sought to reconstruct what had led to the murder of Morrison and the disappearance of Genry. He found that the remains of Genry’s body were discovered in early July 1908 on the shore of Lake Superior, to the east of North Light Station. The body was partly decayed, and investigators were unable to determine precisely when and how he died, though he was officially described on his death certificate as having died on 6 June by “accidental drowning.” The official coroner reports were viewed with skepticism by local police and residents on Grand Island and the nearby mainland, who conjectured a great deal about what had happened to the two men. Because both Genry and Morrison had received their salaries in cash on 6 June and no money was found at either site, widespread speculation ensued that they had been robbed and murdered. However, other theories also circulated (especially regarding Genry’s wife), and the passage of time did not produce an investigative breakthrough. Hence, despite Loren’s probing, the deaths remained a matter of educated guesswork. More than a century after the bodies of Morrison and Genry came to light, Loren brought the story as far as he could, but he did not ultimately find any of the alternative explanations fully convincing. Thus, to the disappointment of some readers, Loren acknowledged that the mystery surrounding the two men’s deaths would probably never be fully dispelled.

After purchasing the North Station lighthouse on Grand Island and living alongside it in the summertime for more than four decades, Loren and Pat accumulated a large set of antique prints, paintings, and photographs of lighthouses from around the world, including Great Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Greece, Brazil, Japan, Russia, China, Canada, and the United States (especially the Great Lakes region). Some of the prints dated as far back as the 17th century. Over time, the Grahams amassed the largest private collection of such items in the world. In 2018, the National Lighthouse Museum on Staten Island, New York, announced that the Grahams would be donating their full set of some 500-600 lighthouse images to the museum for a permanent exhibition to be known as the Loren R. and Patricia Albjerg Graham Collection. The museum expanded its main facility to accommodate the donation, declaring that it was “honored to have such a diverse collection of lighthouse prints to enhance our exhibition space and offer our worldwide visitors an international spirit and shared history with U.S. lighthouses.” The transfer of the prints was completed in 2021, and the full collection was opened for viewing after pandemic-related closures ended.

Loren received many awards and accolades during his academic career, including the George Sarton Medal bestowed on him in 1996 by the History of Science Society for “a lifetime of scholarly achievement.” Loren was 63 by then, but he continued to turn out first-rate publications at a steady pace for another 25 years.  Nonetheless, despite all his accomplishments, he remained a remarkably humble, down-to-earth, amiable, generous, and kind-hearted person until the end of his life. He was revered by his many graduate students over the years, a large number of whom went on to become distinguished scholars themselves (Harley Balzer, Slava Gerovitch, Michael Gordin, Paul Josephson, and Douglas Weiner, to name just a few).  Loren was a beloved fixture at the Davis Center (Russian Research Center) and was equally treasured at MIT, Columbia, and many other places with which he was affiliated. Everywhere he worked, he was a voice of reason and calm, a fount of penetrating insights, and a person of great integrity and good humor.

In November 2024, a month before Loren died, he and I had a lengthy conversation at New York University. He told me that, although he was not traveling much any longer, he was hoping he could go back to Russia “at least once more” if conditions permitted. Referring to the period from 1972 to 1978 when the Soviet regime treated him as persona non grata and denied him access to the USSR (for reasons he was never able to determine), he said he did “not want to give Putin the same pleasure.” Unfortunately, Loren did not live long enough to achieve his goal of going back to Moscow “at least once more” to see friends there, and indeed it may be many more years before Western academics can safely return to Russia for even the most mundane scholarly research.

Despite the climate of repression and censorship (and self-censorship) in Russia nowadays, leading scholars in Russian academic institutes who worked with Loren over the years expressed warm praise of him after his death, describing him as a “renowned scholar” who “knew our country very well.” Three days after Loren died, the Vavilov Institute of the History of Science and Technology, the leading body in Russia for research on the history of scientific thought, posted a notice online “mourning the loss of our long-time friend and talented scholar.” Loren did not make it back to Moscow “once more,” but he would be pleased to know that, even in the grimness of Putin’s Russia, genuine scholars there voiced great esteem for him and lauded him as a “true friend.”