Slavic Scholar Samuel Cross Dies Suddenly

The University suffered a heavy loss yesterday in the sudden death of Samuel Hazzard Cross '12, professor and chairman of the committee of Slavic Languages and Literature, who has long been recognized as one of the country's leading experts on Russia and general Slavonic linguistic studies.

Stricken during the day, Professor Cross was taken to the Cambridge City Hospital where he died at 4 o'clock of a heart attack. He had been seen at breakfast and on the street during the day, but had failed to attend one of his morning classes. He was 55 years old.

Professor Cross graduated from Harvard in 1912 and received his Ph.D. here in 1916. After serving in the World War both in the Army and on the American Commission to Negotiate Peace from 1917 to 1920, he worked in the American Embassy and legation in Belgium during 1920. In the years 1925-26, he was chief of the U. S. Department of Commerce in Europe and lecturer on European trade and economics at Georgetown University. In 1927 he returned to Harvard to teach Slavonic and Germanic languages.

A brilliant student of languages, he was familiar with a dozen European tongues, and in 1942 he served as an interpreter at a White House conference between President Roosevelt and Molotov. In recent years he has been editor and manager of the "Slavonic and East European Review."

Studied in Europe

In addition to his work here, he studied at the universities of Gratz, Freiburg, Berlin, and Leningrad. He was married in 1918 and is survived by three daughters and his wife, from whom he had been separated for several years.

In 1930 Professor Cross became Chairman of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature and also became an associate of Lowell House, where in 1940 he began residence which continued throughout the war years.