Professor Sachs earned his Ph.D. in philology at Johns Hopkins University in 1939 and then worked for two years on the Assyrian Dictionary at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.
In 1941 he went to Brown as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow and in 1946 became one of the founding members of the History of Mathematics Department there.
He later became Chairman of that department, a post which he held until his retirement in 1980.
During his academic career Professor Sachs came to be recognized as one of the best Assyriologists in the world.
Of particular interest to readers of this journal is his publication of Mathematical Cuneiform Texts (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1945) and of Late Babylonian Astronomical and Related Texts (Providence: Brown Univ. Press, 1955).
It was he who discovered in the British Museum an important archive of astronomical diaries from Babylon, and he made it his life's work to publish this unique collection.
Unfortunately, he died before he was able to attain his scholarly goal.
However, before he died, he had named a young Viennese scholar, Professor Hermann Hunger of Vienna, to complete the edition of the astronomical diaries, and Professor Sachs' colleagues in the History of Mathematics Department at Brown have ensured that these diaries will be completed and published.
Professor Sachs' scholarship and profound knowledge of Assyriology will be missed by his colleagues around the world, to whom he gave so generously of his learning, and by the many students to whom his classes were, indeed, an education.