All Scholars

Casper Kraemer was a gifted teacher of ancient history, a papyrologist of repute, and a pioneer in the use of television to bring the achievements of scholarship to the attention of the general public. In the early 1920s he began the study of papyrology under William Westermann at Columbia University and it became his chief scholarly interest. He collaborated with Westermann in publishing the collection of papyri at Cornell University, wrote several articles on various documents, and crowned his work in the field with the editing, accompanied by a comprehensive analytic introduction, of a unique archive that had come to light during an excavation in the northern Negeb.Although an able and dedicated scholar, Kraemer was first and foremost a teacher. His preferred subject was ancient history, and his classes were marked by vigor, an engaging personal style, supremely conscientious preparation (he adopted a different textbook each year as a way of enforcing an ever-fresh presentation), and—what was most unusual in his day—a sociological approach.In 1954 Kraemer convinced CBS to let him put on a pioneering program he had created, a 13-week series on archaeology called "Here is the Past." It was so successful that in 1956 he returned with a follow-up, "Yesterday's Worlds," which ran for half a year. In 1958 he was asked to give a course in ancient history as part of NYU's television teaching project, "Sunrise Semester"; halfway through the term, while on the way to the studio, he suffered the cerebral hemorrhage that ended his life