Edgeir Reidar Benum (13 October 1939 – 18 May 2024) was a Norwegian historian. He was born in

Verdal Municipality Verdal is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Trøndelag Counties of Norway, county, Norway. It is part of the Innherad Districts of Norway, region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the List of towns and cities in ...

, and was a younger brother of athlete

Pål Benum Pål Sverre Benum (3 August 1935 – 23 September 2021) was a Norwegian long-distance runner. He specialized in the longest track distances, 5000 metres, 5000 and 10,000 metres, eventually competing at the 1964 Summer Olympics, 1964 Olympic Gam ...

. He graduated from the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...

with a cand.philol. degree in 1967, and worked as a scholarship holder there from 1968 to 1972.Profile
at the University of Oslo He then became a professor in history at the

University of Tromsø The University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway ( Norwegian: ''Universitetet i Tromsø – Norges arktiske universitet''; Northern Sami: ''Romssa universitehta – Norgga árktalaš universitehta'') is a state university in Norway a ...

from 1972 to 1980 and then at the

from 1980 to 2009. He has twice been a visiting scholar at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. He was a member of the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick University in Christiania was establis ...

Selected bibliography

This is a list of his most notable works: *''Maktsentra og opposisjon. Spaniasaken i Norge 1946-47'', 1969. *''Sentraladministrasjonens historie''. volume 2, 1979. *''Byråkratienes by. Fra 1948 til våre dager''. volume 5 of ''Oslo bys historie'', 1994. *''Overflod og fremtidsfrykt'', volume 12 of ''Aschehougs norgeshistorie'', 1998.

References

List of publications in FRIDA
1939 births 2024 deaths 20th-century Norwegian historians University of Oslo alumni Academic staff of the University of Tromsø Academic staff of the University of Oslo Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters People from Verdal 21st-century Norwegian historians {{Norway-historian-stub