Sir Leon Radzinowicz, (15 August 1906 – 29 December 1999) was a criminologist and academic. He was the founding director of the Institute of Criminology at the

Faculty of Law A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate). In American usage such divisions are generally referred to as colleges ...

at the University of Cambridge.

Early life

Radzinowicz was born on 15 August 1906 in Łódź,

Congress Poland Congress Poland, Congress Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It w ...

. He studied law as an undergraduate student at the University of Paris and the University of Geneva. He went on to study for a doctorate at the

University of Cracow The Jagiellonian University (Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...

. During this time, he spent a year studying under Enrico Ferri at the Institute of Criminology in Rome, Italy. Radzinowicz moved to England in 1938, having been granted funding by the Polish Ministry of Justice to study the English legal system.

Academic career

During World War II, Radzinowicz established the Department of Criminal Science in the

at the University of Cambridge. From 1949 to 1959, Radzinowicz was Director of the Department of Criminal Science, University of Cambridge. In 1959, he founded the Institute of Criminology at the

at the University of Cambridge. In 1959, he became the first Wolfson Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminology. Radzinowicz made a major contribution to the study of

criminology Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and so ...

by his research in the trends of legal thought which led to modern concepts in the administration of justice which were adopted in many of the democratic countries. Among his most significant works are History of English Criminal Law (4 vols. 1948–68), In Search of Criminology (1961), The Need for Criminology (1965), and Ideology and Crime (1966). Radzinowicz also wrote an autobiography, Adventures in Criminology (1999).

Death

On 29 December 1999, Radzinowicz died in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States. He was aged 93. He is buried with his third wife in the

Ascension Parish Burial Ground The Ascension Parish Burial Ground, formerly known as the burial ground for the parish of St Giles and St Peter's, is a cemetery off Huntingdon Road in Cambridge, England. Many notable University of Cambridge academics are buried there, includi ...

in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England.

Personal life

Radzinowicz had married three times. He married Irena Szereszewska in 1933; they divorced in 1955. He was married to Mary Ann Nevins from 1958 to 1979. They had two children: Ann and William. In 1979, he married Isolde Klarmann (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

Doerenburg; 11 October 1915 – 2 February 2011). Radzinowicz converted to Christianity from Judaism prior to World War II.

Honours

In the 1970 New Years Honours, Radzinowicz was appointed a Knight Bachelor in recognition of his work at the University of Cambridge. On 24 February 1970, he was knighted by

Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. She was queen ...

during a ceremony at

Buckingham Palace Buckingham Palace () is a London royal residence and the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is often at the centre of state occasions and royal hospitality. It ...

. In 1973, he was elected a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # C ...

(FBA). On 13 April 1999, he was appointed an honorary Queen's Counsel (QC).

References

External links

*
Sir Leon Radzinowicz Papers
at Florida State University Libraries, Special Collections & Archives {{DEFAULTSORT:Radzinowicz, Leon 1906 births 1999 deaths British criminologists Knights Bachelor Polish emigrants to the United Kingdom Jews who immigrated to the United Kingdom to escape Nazism 20th-century Polish Jews Writers from Łódź Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Honorary King's Counsel Wolfson Professors of Criminology