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Robert Lee Wolff was a Harvard history professor, known for his 1956 book The Balkans in our time and his library collection of English novels of the Victorian period with over 18,000 items.
Wolff received his bachelor's degree and his master's degree from Harvard University, where he was a teaching fellow from 1937 to 1941, when he left Harvard to join the O.S.S. As a leading expert on the Balkans, he was assistant to the director of the Balkans section of the O.S.S. After the end of WWII, Wolff taught for four years at the University of Wisconsin and then in 1950 became an associate professor in the Harvard history department. He became a full professor in 1955 and served as the chair of the department from 1960 to 1963. In 1963–1964 Wolff was a Guggenheim fellow. He died of a heart attack in 1980 at the age of 64, while still an active member of the Harvard history department.
Wolff wrote articles, prefaces, and books on history and English literature and was the co-author of three widely used textbooks in high school and undergraduate history courses. His library of English novels of the Victorian period was acquired in the 1980s by the University of Texas at Austin for $2.6 million.
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