Abram Leon Sachar was an American historian and founding president of Brandeis University. He was born in New York City to Samuel Sachar, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, and Sarah Abramowitz, a native of Jerusalem. When he was 7 years old, his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where his grandfather served as a chief rabbi. He was briefly enlisted for service in World War I, and then attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in history. During his junior year, he studied languages at Harvard and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1920. From 1920 to... 1923 he studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, England, where he received his doctorate in history for his thesis on the Victorian House of Lords. Upon his return to the United States, Sachar joined the faculty of the history department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, teaching Modern European and English History. He remained at this position for the next 24 years. In 1926 he married Thelma Horwitz, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington University in St. Louis.
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