Professor Emeritus Richard Storr, a historian who was briefly York’s acting president, died earlier this week at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto following a brief illness.
Prof. Storr was born and educated in the United States, receiving a PhD from Harvard University in 1949. After teaching at various American colleges, he accepted a position at the University of Chicago in 1951 and remained there until 1968 after which he joined the History Department and the Humanities Division at York University.
He served as director of the Graduate History Program from 1969 to 1971 and was acting dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies from 1971 to 1972. Storr served on several Senate committees including the Sub-committee on Long-Range Planning, and acted as a consultant to the vice-president on long-range planning. In addition, he also sat on the Council of Ontario Universities.
In 1973, Prof. Storr was asked by Robert MacIntosh, then chair of the Board of Governors, to become acting president of York University. Before Prof. Storr could assume the position, he was forced to withdraw due to a recurrence of an old illness. He retired from active teaching in 1982.
Storr is the author of The Beginning of Graduate Education in America (1953), Harper’s University : The Beginnings, A History of the University of Chicago (1966) and The Beginning of the Future: A Historical Approach to Graduate Education in the Arts and Sciences (1973) as well as numerous articles on American higher education.
Prof. Storr is survived by his wife Virginia, children Elizabeth, Robert, and Annie, and six grandchildren. No memorial details have been made available.