Max Radin

Born on March 29, 1880, in Kempen, then in Russian Poland, he came to the United States as a child and grew up in a deeply learned household. His father was Rabbi Adolph Moses Radin, and that early home life helped spark his lasting command of languages and classical literature.

He became an American legal scholar, philologist, and author, and spent much of his career at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught law from 1919 until 1948. He was especially known for his work in Roman law, legal history, and jurisprudence, and for writing with unusual range across law, classics, history, and religion.

He died on June 22, 1950. Remembered as a prolific and wide-ranging thinker, he brought together the precision of a legal mind and the curiosity of a humanist, which still makes his work appealing to readers interested in how law connects with culture and history.