Prof. Lynn White Jr., Renowned Scholar, Dies of Heart Attack at 79

Lynn White Jr., professor emeritus of history at UCLA and an internationally known scholar of the Medieval period, has died at age 79, a university spokesman said Tuesday.

White, who retired in 1974, had remained active as a lecturer and writer until about a year ago, when he was stricken by heart disease. A member of his family said White suffered a massive heart attack early Monday at his Brentwood home and died about an hour later at UCLA Medical Center.

He was the author of four scholarly books and scores of papers and was editor of two historical collections and a collection of essays.

His 1962 book, “Medieval Technology and Social Change,” is considered a classic in its field and has been translated into several languages, the UCLA spokesman said.

A native of San Francisco, White was a 1928 graduate of Stanford University and earned his doctorate in history at Harvard University in 1934.

He taught at Stanford and Princeton universities and became president of Mills College in Oakland in 1943.

White left Mills in 1958 to join the UCLA faculty. At UCLA, he founded the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in 1964 and was that institution’s director until 1970.

White was named faculty lecturer at UCLA in 1973, the highest distinction the faculty can bestow upon a colleague. He also was the recipient of a number of other scholarly honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society and the president of several learned societies.

He is survived by his wife, Maude McArthur White; daughters Catherine White and Mary White Pilla, both of Brentwood, and Ethel White Buzzell of Stafford, N.H., and a son, Lynn C. White III, a professor of Chinese studies at Princeton University.

The family said a memorial service will be held Thursday at 2 p.m. at Westwood Presbyterian Church.