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Robert E Byrnes, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, died on June 19 at Ocean Isle, North Carolina, where he was taking part in an annual family gathering. In his last book, VO. Kliuchevskii: Historian of Russia (Indiana University Press, 1995), Professor Byrnes quoted a line from Henry Adams: "a teacher affects eternity: he can never tell when his influence stops."The line he chose for Kliuchevskii is an apt choice for an appreciation of his own life and work. A distinguished, much-published scholar with a long record of achievements both in and out of academia, Robert Byrnes valued especially, and was valued for, his role as teacher, and friend and mentor, for generations of students and many others who never had the privilege of enrolling in a course with him.
Born on December 30, 1917, and raised in a small town in up-state NewYork, Waterville (a community"civilized, generous, and patriotic," he later recalled), in a family of twelve children, Professor Byrnes cherished all his life the values his parents and teachers exemplified. At Amherst College he benefited, he once wrote, from a "broad liberal education by immensely dedicated...