Gerald Grob

Gerald N. Grob, 84

Evergreen, Colorado - Professor Gerald N. Grob, historian of American medicine and internationally known expert of mental health policy in the United States, died of liver cancer on Dec. 16, 2015, in the Life Care Center in Evergreen, Colorado. At the time of his death, he was Henry E. Sigerist Professor of the History of Medicine (Emeritus) at Rutgers University; a member of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers; and also Senior Research Associate in Psychiatry at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York City.

Born in 1931 in New York City of Jewish parents who emigrated from Poland where some family members were murdered in the Holocaust, Professor Grob remembered that grim event for all his life. He earned his undergraduate degree from the City College of New York and his Ph.D. in 1958 from Northwestern University. His education was interrupted by his military service in the Army Corps of Engineers from 1955 to 1957.

Professor Grob's first teaching position was at Clark University (1957-1969), where he began doing research at what became his major life's work on mental illness. At the state mental hospital in Worcester he uncovered surviving manuscript records of every single patient in the institution that by the 1960s exceeded 70,000 cases.

In the classroom at Clark, Professor Grob was a provocateur who provoked students into rethinking what they thought they knew about American history. A warm, gentle scholar, he was loved and admired by those whom he taught and respected by colleagues with whom he exchanged ideas. He was a great human being, kind and considerate to colleagues and students alike, and his dry sense of humor kept him on an even keel so he never lost his temper. In recognition of his service to the university he was awarded the inaugural Daniel Gorenstein Award at Rutgers in 1994.

His pioneering study - "The State and the Mentally Ill" - published in 1966, was awarded the annual prize by the American Association of State and Local History. Although the study focused only on the history of the Worcester Asylum from 1830 to 1920, it shaped almost all his thinking about the history of mental institutions throughout America, and the developments in psychiatry that influenced them.

After moving to Rutgers, Professor Grob authored a three-volume history on mental health policy, "Mental Institutions in America" (1973), "Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940" (1983) and "From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modem America" (1991). Another book, his classic, "The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America's Mentally Ill," was issued in 1994.

He was co-author with his Clark colleague and friend of fifty-seven years, George Athan Billias, of "Interpretations of American History," one ofthe best-selling readings books of its kind, which went through six editions from 1967 to 1991. Other books included "Aging Bones: A Short History of Osteoporosis" (2013); "Diagnosis, Therapy and Evidence: Conundrums in Modem American Medicine" (2010); "The Dilemma of Federal Mental Health Policy: Radical Reform or Incremental Change" (2006); and "The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America" (2002).

For his scholarly writings, Grob received numerous awards, among them the Lifetime Achievement A ward from the American Association for the History of Medicine and election as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Grob is survived by his wife of 61 years, Lila, three sons, Bradford (Sharon), Evan(Ellen) and Seth (Stephanie), a sister, Gloria Oresky (Marvin) and eight grandchildren.