Benjamin Nelson: 1911-1977

Professor Benjamin Nelson died suddenly of a heart attack on September 17, 1977 while on a train in West Germany. He had attended the Max Weber conference in Konstanz and was on his way to a conference on “Origins and Traditions of Law,” sponsored by the Institut für Historische Anthropologie in Freiberg.

Ben Nelson died while fully engaged in the professional work

that he loved, and one can well imagine that he was in the very midst of pondering profound sociocultural problems when his end arrived. Death was the only event that could halt the unceasing productivity of Ben's multifaceted and amazingly original mind.

Benjamin Nelson was primarily identified as a sociologist and historian and I am qualified only to touch upon his achievements in these areas. His book, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood, first published in 1949 and reprinted in 1969, was immediately recognized as a classic in the history of ideas. The book dealt with the interface between religion and economics and established its author as a first-rank sociologist in the tradition of Max Weber. Later books, edited by Ben, included Freud and the 20th Century and Personality—Work—Community: An Introduction to Social Science.

It would take many pages simply to list Ben's endless publications but perhaps even the book titles just mentioned hint at the extreme breadth and depth of his scholarship. The mastery of just one civilization or one field of knowledge or one discipline was not enough for him. Ben was an acknowledged worldwide authority on Max Weber. He was a foremost contributor to the comparative study of civilizations. He had an all-encompassing knowledge of the history of science, especially in its medieval beginnings. In recent years Ben developed a deep interest in oriental cultures and was an expert contributor in this area. Ben Nelson was truly a polymath in the social sciences, with a breadth of awareness that few people are privileged to achieve.

This brings me