The Allan Sharlin Memorial Award
By all accounts, the late Allan Sharlin was a remarkable person. As a scholar and professor, his interdisciplinary approach served as a model for students and colleagues, and as an individual his extraordinary integrity, conscientiousness, and courage elicited an enduring respect and honor from all who knew him. Professor Sharlin began his academic career in the field of history, earning his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago and his master's and doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1972 and 1976, respectively. A single department could not contain his broad range of interests, however, and his first teaching position was as a lecturer not in history but at the Department of Sociology at Madison. He soon discovered that his interdisciplinary interests would benefit from a more thorough understanding of the techniques of demographic analysis, and in 1976 he was invited to serve as a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Office of Population Research, where he honed his skills in that field. The Department of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley had been looking for a specialist in demography for several years, but was frustrated by the candidates' lack of depth in scholarship, despite strong technical abilities. On reading Dr. Sharlin's published bibliography, however, department faculty were delighted to see several articles about the distinguished sociologist Max Weber. Sharlin was brought to Berkeley in 1978 as an assistant professor in the department, where he quickly established ties with Berkeley's Graduate Group in Demography, the Institute of Urban and Regional Development, and the Institute of International Studies. The late 1970s was a period of intense social dissent at Berkeley, when many departments were highly politicized and factionalized. It was a difficult time for assistant professors, but in the face of such pressure, Dr. Sharlin rose above petty squabbles. A colleague remarked that "despite his junior status as Assistant Professor, his word carried a great deal of moral authority." He took a very active role on the campus, serving on the Department of Sociology's Committee on Academic Progress, the Ad Hoc Committee on Advising, the Graduate Admissions Committee, and others. He served as the department placement officer and worked for several years on the executive committee of the Graduate Group in Demography. Professor Sharlin is known to demographers today for the "Sharlin Hypothesis" which he developed while researching the demographics of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Würzburg, Germany. Demographers had deduced that preindustrial cities had a natural population decrease, surviving by in-migration only. Dr. Sharlin hypothesized that the urban population could be divided demographically into two groups: the relatively permanent, stable, and prosperous citizens, who would have been more likely to have built up immunities against the common urban diseases; and a poorer migrant group who served the more affluent population. Like all poorer communities, this group would have been more likely to succumb to disease; in addition, as servants they might have found it more difficult to marry and bear children, and they might have been more likely to leave the cities and return to the countryside. The Sharlin Hypothesis posits that the prosperous community was reproducing itself at sustainable levels and that it was the poorer community's negative population growth that skewed the overall figures toward population decline. Allan Sharlin's meticulous examination of archival documents set him apart from the great majority of researchers in his field. In addition to the Würzburg study, he researched the transformation of premodern German status groups to modern social classes in an unfinished project entitled From Estates to Bourgeois Society: The Transformation of Social Structure in Frankfurt, 1915-1864. Although neither project reached the publication stage, several of his colleagues in sociology, history, and demography have continued and expanded upon his research. His unusually rich scope of knowledge encompassed historical sociology, social theory, demography, and social stratification, and the interdisciplinary nature of his work led him to participate in many colloquia and faculty seminars, including those of the Institute of International Studies, where he received funding for two years. He was an enthusiastic and popular professor, generous with his time and energy. His curiosity was unquenchable, and he took great interest in the research and publications of others, frequently offering valuable insights into their work. Colleagues and friends of Professor Sharlin remember him as an immensely sociable person with a tremendous energy and an enormous circle of friends. "We were amazed to see someone with such good scholarship over such a wide range of subjects who could spend so much time schmoozing" recalled a colleague. He became a very active member of the Strawberry Canyon Athletic Masters, a campus swim team known as the "SCAMers." His gregariousness proved an asset to the Sociology Department when on more than one occasion he was able to make use of his vast network -- spanning the campus or the country -- to assist his colleagues. The Graduate Group in Demography, with a wink to their friend's voracious appetite for the written word, named their library the "Allan Sharlin Memorial Library: Noncirculating -- No Exceptions!" Professor Sharlin's unique intellectual and personal odyssey was cut short by his death from cancer at age 33. He continued to publish, teach, and participate in scholarly activities until the last few months. Towards the end of his life he was faced with the choice of isolating himself in an attempt to finish his manuscript, or continuing to interact with his colleagues and friends, maintaining his intellectual life and work, seeking new and sometimes experimental medical treatments, and enjoying the many facets of his very rich life. Allan Sharlin chose not to withdraw, even at the expense of his final work, but instead struggled valiantly to remain active and interactive until the very end. His heroic efforts are honored today by the Allan Sharlin Memorial Award, a fellowship established by the Sharlin family in 1983. This award keeps alive Professor Sharlin's interdisciplinary scholastic tradition through the support of graduate students who would have benefited most from his tutelage. Contributions to the Allan Sharlin Memorial Award can be sent to Allan Sharlin Memorial Award Fund Make your check payable to: UC Regents See also Allan Sharlin's bibliography and awards, and our list of past Sharlin Fellows. |
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