Biography

Martha Derthick was the Julia Allen Cooper Professor Emeritus in Government and Foreign Affairs.  Before coming to UVa in 1983, Professer Derthick held faculty positions at Dartmouth College, Stanford University, Harvard University and Boston College, and served as Director of Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. 

She taught and researched for more than 15 years at the University, retiring in 1999. Dr. Derthick was a leading expert on Social Security and other public policy matters.  She wrote and edited books and articles on a range of government and policy issues, among them Policymaking for Social Security (1979), The Politics of Deregulation (1985), and Up in Smoke: From Legislation to Litigation in Tobacco Politics (2002). In addition to her teaching and research, she served on the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, also known as the Scranton Commission, convened after the protests and shootings at Kent State University in 1970. She received numerous professional honors, including a book award established in her name by the American Political Science Association.

Obituaries in the The Washington Post and The New York Times.