Roberto Sabatino Lopez

Roberto Sabatino Lopez (October 8, 1910 – July 6, 1986), also known as Robert S. Lopez, was an Jewish-Italian-American historian of medieval European economic history. He taught for many years at Yale University as a Sterling Professor of History with a great passion also for the history of the Commons in Italy and Europe in general.

Roberto Sabatino Lopez was born in Genoa, Italy. He received a doctorate from the University of Milan in 1932 and taught medieval history at various universities in Italy until 1939, when he fled Benito Mussolini's regime to go to the United States. Hoping to find employment at an American university, Lopez enrolled in the graduate history program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which awarded him a Ph.D in 1942.

From 1942 to 1944 Lopez worked in the Italian section of the Office of War Information in New York City. There he met his future wife, Claude-Anne Kirschen, a wartime refugee from Belgium who had come to New York with her family in 1940. He afterward maintained that his successful courtship of her was his supreme wartime accomplishment.

He married Claude-Anne Kirschen in 1946. They had two sons, Michael and Lawrence, after moving to New Haven, Connecticut.

In 1946, Lopez was hired as an assistant professor at Yale. He rose through the academic ranks to full professor. He was honored by selection as a Sterling Professor of History, a recognition of his academic contributions.

At Yale, in 1962 Lopez founded the interdisciplinary graduate program in Medieval Studies, and served as its chairman for many years. Originally a master's program, it awarded doctorates by 1965. When founded, it was the third such medieval studies program in the United States.

Lopez trained a number of distinguished medieval scholars, among them David Herlihy, Edward M. Peters, and Patrick J. Geary. Lopez retired from the Yale faculty in 1981 after 35 years at the university.

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