By Monica Friedlander
Jon Gjerde, the dean of the Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters and Science, died unexpectedly in his home in Albany Sunday evening. He was 55.
A history professor, Gjerde was a leading scholar of American history, with a special interest in the Midwest during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1985 and was named dean of the Social Sciences Division in 2007, after having served as interim dean the previous year. In 2000-2003 he served as chair of the Department of History.
"Jon Gjerde was a wonderful colleague, both as professor and dean, who inspired us all with his quiet and sure intelligence and his commitment to UC Berkeley. We will all miss him terribly,” said Mark Richards, executive dean of the College of Letters and Science.
Gjerde was recently named Alexander F. & May T. Morrison Professor of American History and American Citizenship. He was the author of five books, including two highly-acclaimed, prize-winning books: "The Minds of the West: The Ethnocultural Evolution of the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917” and “From Peasants to Farmers: The Migration from Belestrand, Norway to the Upper Middle West.” At the time of his death, he was nearing completion of a third major book on Catholic-Protestant political and cultural interaction in the United States in the nineteenth century.
Born in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1953, Gjerde earned his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in 1982 and his undergraduate degree from the University of Northern Iowa. While known as a leading scholar in his field, he would often say, according to his colleague, Professor David A. Hollinger, “In some ways, I’ve never really left the Middle West.”
Dean Gjerde is survived by his wife, Ruth Gjerde, who works in Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and two daughters, Christine and Kari.
Memorial contributions may be directed to the Jon and Ruth Gjerde Graduate Student Endowment, a fund they established last year to benefit the History Department.
