The London-born historian Tony Judt died at his home in New York City on Friday, August 6^th, aged 62.

Tony Judt was descended from a line of Lithuanian rabbis and was born in the Jewish East End of London. He spent several summers in Israel and served as an interpreter for the Israel Defence Forces during and after the 1967 Six Day War.

A history graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, Judt then taught philosophy, politics and economics at St Anne’s College, Oxford, from 1980 to 1987. In 1988, he became a professor at New York University, where seven years later he was appointed director of the Erich Maria Remarque Institute for the study of Europe.

He wrote several books about French political culture and the downfall of Marxism and Communism, including Marxism and the French Left (1990) and Past Imperfect (1992). In Chronicles of a Death Foretold, published in History Today in October 1991, he commented on the impact of the ‘death of Marxism’ on historical scholarship and explained how the historiography of Europe in the 20^th century had changed since the fall of the Soviet Union.

He was the 2006 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for his history of modern Europe Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (2005). He became a harsh critic of Israel and wrote several essays for the New York Review of Books in which, in 2003, he notably called for a single bi-national state which would include Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

In 2008, Judt was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease (after the American baseball player). In the spring of 2009, he was awarded a special Orwell prize for lifetime achievement for his contribution to British political writing.

He spoke about his illness in January in an interview with Ed Pilkington from The Guardian.

Tony Judt’s obituary is published in The Guardian.