Alice Ruth Wexler (born 1942) is an American author and historian. She has written two biographies on the anarchist

Emma Goldman Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Russian-born anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of th ...

. Wexler has also written about

Huntington's disease Huntington's disease (HD), also known as Huntington's chorea, is a neurodegenerative disease that is mostly inherited. The earliest symptoms are often subtle problems with mood or mental abilities. A general lack of coordination and an uns ...

, which has affected her family and which her younger sister,

Nancy Wexler Nancy Wexler (born 19 July 1945) FRCP is an American geneticist and the Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, best known for her involve ...

, researches.

Early life and career

Alice Ruth Wexler was born May 31, 1942, in

New York, New York New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, to Leonore (Sabin) and Milton. Though her parents divorced in 1962, her mother's diagnosis of

late in the 1960s became a central research focus of the family. Wexler taught at

Sonoma State University Sonoma State University (SSU, Sonoma State, or Sonoma) is a public university in Rohnert Park in Sonoma County, California, US. It is one of the smallest members of the California State University (CSU) system. Sonoma State offers 92 Bachelor's ...

from 1972 to 1982. She served as a visiting professor of history at multiple American universities and received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1999.

Works

* '' Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life'' (1984) * '' Emma Goldman in Exile'' (1989) * ''Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research'' (1995) * ''The Woman Who Walked into the Sea: Huntington's and the Making of a Genetic Disease'' (2008)

References

1942 births American historians Living people {{US-writer-stub