RASMUSSEN, Wayne D(avid) 1915-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born February 5, 1915, in Ryegate, MT; died April 30, 2004, in Concord, MA. Historian and author. Rasmussen, who enjoyed a long career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was considered a premier authority on the history of agriculture. Growing up on a farm in Montana, he received a B.A. from the University of Montana in 1937, served in Army intelligence during World War II, and completed his Ph.D. at George Washington University in 1950. Rasmussen's career with the Department of Agriculture began in 1937, when he was hired as a records clerk, and he became one of the department's historians in 1940; in 1961 he was made chief of agricultural history. Because there was so much turnover in his department, government officials depended on Rasmussen to help them maintain historical perspective on changes in American agriculture, and he was an important federal government advisor. Rasmussen often wrote on how technology and other advances have changed agriculture in the United States, and how these changes have affected many other aspects of life in America. He published a number of books on the subject, including Liberal Education and Agriculture (1957), Agricultural History in the United States: A Documentary History (1975), and Farmers, Cooperatives, and USDA: A History of Agricultural Cooperative Service (1991). Active in numerous agriculture and history organizations, including the Associates of the National Agricultural Library, the Society for History in the Federal Government, and the Agricultural History Society, of which he was a former president, Rasmussen had also taught as a professor at the University of Maryland. Suffering from Parkinson's disease later in life, he retired from the Department of Agriculture in 1987.

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Washington Post, May 4, 2004, p. B6.