Carlo M. Cipolla; Prize-Winning Historian

Carlo M. Cipolla, 78, prize-winning UC Berkeley historian whose specialty was economic history and medieval and early modern Italy. Cipolla taught at universities in his native Italy before joining UC Berkeley in 1959. He was the author of more than 20 books that explored economic and monetary history and the history of medicine and public health. In the 1970s he became one of the first historians to bring medical history into the wider field of social history with such elegant and lucid volumes as “Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance” and “Faith, Reason and the Plague.” His 1992 book, “Miasmas and Disease,” recounted the conditions and beliefs that influenced public health and the environment in the pre-Industrial Age. Critics liked his deft writing style, which made his books accessible to the general reader. In 1995, Cipolla was a recipient of the Balzan prize, the world’s second-richest group of prizes after the Nobels, for his original works on economic history. On Sept. 5 in Pavia, Italy, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.