Obituaries

Paul S. Guinn, a European historian and associate professor emeritus at UB, died April 22 in Mercy Hospital after a long illness. He was 88.

Born in the Hague, Netherlands, while his father was serving as a commercial attaché to the U.S. Consulate, Guinn and his family moved frequently when he was young.

He and his mother escaped to France from Brussels, Belgium, when World War II began and sailed to the U.S. aboard a ship sent to rescue stranded Americans.

He went to high school in Istanbul, where his father was U.S. consul, and earned a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College in 1950.

Guinn served in the Air Force in the Research Studies Institute at Air University in Montgomery, Ala., attaining the rank of first lieutenant, and went on to complete his master’s degree and doctorate at Harvard University.

He began his career in 1961 with the Institute for Defense Analysis in Washington, D.C., as an executive editor in the International Studies Division.

After a year as a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Institute for International Peace in Washington, he joined the UB faculty in 1967 as an associate professor of history.

He retired in 1998.

Among his honors and awards were a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 1972 and the George Lewis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association in 1965. The Beer prize recognized his book, “British Strategy and Politics, 1914-18,” as the best book on European international history that year.

Survivors include his wife of 46 years, Rev. Patricia J., deacon at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Buffalo and a former librarian at UB’s Lockwood Library.