Fritz Ringer, Emeritus Mellon Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, died on February 3, 2006, of a chronic pulmonary illness with which he had been struggling for several years. With his death we lost one of our most distinctive and recognizable voices in modern European intellectual history. He leaves us a distinguished body of scholarship that reflects an unusually unified, lifelong, intellectual project as well as an example of active, principled conduct in defense of the ethical ideals of the university. Both will remain challenges to us now and in the future.