Gordon K. Lewis (1919–1991)

Gordon K. Lewis, a leading expert on Caribbean politics, died on 16th August 1991 aged 72 years.

The University of Puerto Rico, with which Dr. Lewis was long affiliated, reported his death but did not give the cause, saying only that he had suffered a long illness.

A native of Wales, Dr. Lewis first came to Puerto Rico to help write its first Constitution, which was adopted in 1952. He earned his doctorate in 1954 at Harvard University and then returned to Puerto Rico.

He joined the political science department at the University of Puerto Rico in the 1950's and served as director of the university's Institute of Caribbean Studies from 1983 to 1987.

He had been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, the University of California, Brandeis University, Oxford University and Michigan State University. He served as a consultant to the governments of Trinidad and Tobago and the United States Virgin Islands.

The University of Puerto Rico said he had just completed a book on the Caribbean, to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

His other books included "Grenada: The Jewel Despoiled," published in 1987, on the American invasion of Grenada in 1983; "The Main Currents of Caribbean Thought," published in 1983; "With the Saints at the River: The Jonestown Guyana Holocaust," 1978, and "Puerto Rico: Freedom and Power in the Caribbean," 1962.

Gordon Lewis is survived by his wife, Sybil Farrell de Lewis, and his five children.