Historian Roy Porter, a faculty member with the
College's National Health System Term Abroad program since 1979,
died March 3, it was reported by Robert Baker, professor
of philosophy.
Porter, 56, of the Wellcome Institute of the History
of Medicine, died of a heart attack while bicycling near his home in
a village outside of Hastings, England.
Students, faculty and alumni of the NHS program
will remember “Roy,” as he preferred to be called, as a genial guide
to British history and culture, Baker recalled this week.
Said Baker, “He was fond of taking Union students around
his alma mater, Cambridge University, but in recent years
he supplemented his lectures with walking tours of London.
After enlightening students about the Georgian architecture of
their dormitories, Roy walked them to the Thames, traveling back
in time as he strolled. The tour went from
20th-century modern, to Bloomsbury of the
inter-war period, past Victorian marvels, like the Russell Hotel, to
his favorite era, the 18th century. Continuing down the
centuries, Roy brought the class to Elizabethan and medieval London
– and eventually to a pub in Convent Garden.”
Porter was the author of more than 200 books and
articles including London: A Social History
(1994); The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A
Medical History of Humanity (1997); Enlightenment: Britain and
the Creation of the Modern World (2000); and
Madness: A Brief History (2002).
Students, faculty and alumni wishing to send notes of
condolence to Roy's family and to his colleagues at the
Wellcome Institute can do so through Baker at the Bioethics
Center (bakerr@union.edu).