George Rabinowitz, 67, Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, died of sudden cardiac arrest on March 18, 2011 while on a research fellowship in Trondheim, Norway.
George was born in New York City on April 27, 1943, the second son of Dr. and Mrs. Samuel J. Rabinowitz. He was a fun-loving child who enjoyed playing stickball in the neighborhood more than school. George attended public school in the Bronx, NY, and thereafter Hobart College. After a brief stint in medical school, he found his academic calling as a graduate student at the University of Michigan, where he was awarded a masters degree in Mathematics in 1971, and a Ph.D. in Political Science in 1973. There he met the love of his life, Stuart Elaine Macdonald, also a political science Ph.D. student, whom he married in 1970 and continued to take on a date every weekend thereafter.
Together with Stuart, George moved to Chapel Hill in 1971 to take a job at the University of North Carolina, where he taught and conducted research for almost 40 years, until his untimely death. George and Stuart had two sons, Joshua and David, both of whom attended Chapel Hill public schools and the University of North Carolina. Joshua is a chemistry professor at Princeton University, and David a filmmaker in Chapel Hill. George was a remarkably dedicated father, cooking dinner and reading to his boys every night. More recently he was a loving caregiver to his parents, who spent their final years at The Cedars in Chapel Hill.
