Murra, John V. 1916-2006 (John Victor Murra)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born August 24, 1916, in Odessa, Russia; died October 16, 2006, in Ithaca, NY. Anthropologist, educator, and author. Murra was best known as an authority on the Inca empire. Born Isak Lipschitz, he changed his name upon immigrating to the United States in 1934. He settled in Chicago, but two years later traveled to Spain to fight with the Republicans against fascist leader Francisco Franco. After the Republicans were defeated, he returned to Illinois to study at the University of Chicago. He earned a B.A. there in 1936, followed by an M.A. in 1942. Murra was an instructor in anthropology at the university until 1947, and taught at the University of Puerto Rico through 1950. Around 1946, he applied for U.S. citizenship, but was denied because of his previous involvement with the the leftist Spanish Republicans. He was finally naturalized in 1950, and in 1956 gained a passport. That year, Murra completed his doctorate at the University of Chicago. Murra was a Vassar professor in the 1950s and taught at Yale from 1961 to 1963. For the next three years he was principal investigator of Inca life in Huanuco, Peru, for the National Science Foundation. Murra's research into Incan life eventually led him to some original views on that empire's social and economic structure. For example, he theorized that the Incas had developed a complicated trade of goods between mountain and valley dwellers, who exchanged products such as llama wool and maize in what Murra described as a "vertical archipelago." Further archeological research has since borne out many of his ideas, which he expressed in Economic Organization of the Inca State (1980). Murra joined the Cornell University faculty in 1968 as a professor of anthropology, and he taught there until his 1982 retirement.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New York Times, October 24, 2006, p. A27; November 2, 2006, p. A2.

Times (London, England), November 1, 2006, p. 66.