Erwin Steinberg
American academic
Erwin Ray Steinberg (November 15, 1920 - October 2, 2012) was an American scholar and professor.
He began teaching at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now known as Carnegie Mellon University, in 1946, fresh from the U.S. Army Air Force. He was the dean of Carnegie Tech's Margaret Morrison Carnegie College from 1960 until it closed in 1973, and he was the first dean of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. He also held the Thomas S. Baker Professorship of English and Interdisciplinary Studies from 1981 to 1993, and in 1991 he was named Carnegie Mellon's first vice provost for education. In October 2006, at the 25th anniversary of the Master of Arts in Professional Writing Program that he helped found, Baker Hall A53 was named the Erwin R. Steinberg Auditorium in honor of his record of achievement and service to Carnegie Mellon. Then, at the age of 86 and after 60 years of teaching, he announced his retirement and taught his last classes in the Fall 2006 semester. He died of pneumonia in 2012.
Education
Ph.D., New York University, 1956
M.S., State University of New York, 1942
B.S., State University of New York at Albany, 1941
Major research interests
European novelists of the early twentieth century: esp. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, and Franz Kafka.
Style, composition, assessment of the teaching of writing.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Erwin Steinberg” as american academic. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american academic. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5396204. VIAF identifies the subject as 19692171. The Library of Congress control number is n79017949. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920, 2012, 1946 and 1960.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Erwin Steinberg”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Erwin Steinberg primary sources, Erwin Steinberg archive and Erwin research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Erwin Steinberg”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Erwin Steinberg” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.