Gertrude Himmelfarb is professor emeritus of history at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Until 1988, she was distinguished professor of history and for many years chairman of the doctoral program in history.

Professor Himmelfarb received her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1950. She also studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary and at Girton College, Cambridge.

She has been the recipient of many honorary degrees and has received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society and the American Association of University Women.

She is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Humanities. In 1991, she delivered the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A member of the Board of Trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, she also sits on the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, the Council of Academic Advisers of the American Enterprise Institute and the Board of Advisers of the Library of America. Until recently she served on the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities and on the editorial boards of the American Historical Review, the American Scholar and other journals.

Professor Himmelfarb has written extensively on Victorian England and on contemporary society and culture. Her most recent book is The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (1995).