Carl Ralph Herkowitz was born on July 9, 1944 and died on April 16, 2017.

Carl Herkowitz was an unconventional scholar, but a highly effective one. His affect was one of thoroughly rumpled and slightly distracted enthusiasm, and his prose tended distinctly toward the purple end of the spectrum. It was easy, even tempting, to dismiss him as a guileless numismatic abecedarian.

Yet, at a time when many considered the mysterious Ard W. Browning to be a semi-mythical character, perhaps a nom de plume for an author wishing to remain anonymous, it was Carl who found proof that the author of The Early Quarter Dollars of the United States, 1796-1838 had been an employee of the Central Islip State Hospital, a mental health facility on Long Island. (See "Ard W. Browning Through a 1920 Looking Glass," The Asylum, Summer-Fall, 1997; and ""Ard W. Browning Comes Home," The Asylum, Fall 2000).

Numismatic historians all "knew" that Mint Melter and Refiner Jonas McClintock had authored the 1844 memorandum, quoting Adam Eckfeldt, that tied George Washington directly to the creation of the 1792 half dismes. Then Carl demonstrated that the true author of the memorandum was Philadelphia local historian John McAllister, Jr, and that McAllister created three separate versions of the memorandum (see "The Mystery of 'J. Mc' and the Eckfeldt Memo," The Numismatist, June, 1996).

When Len Augsburger, Pete Smith, and I wrote 1792: Birth of a Nation's Coinage, our monograph on the first products of the infant United States Mint, it was clear to us that the book should be dedicated to Carl, in recognition of his great contributions to the study of the 1792 coinage. We wanted to surprise him with the news; he died before that could be arranged. While we are sad that he never knew he had received such fitting recognition, we are glad to be able to give credit where credit is due, and to recognize the achievements of a fine man whose voice was silenced too soon.

As Carl said of Ard Browning, so we say of him: "In the twilight of his journey, while following an avocation and a "star" [he] is among his fellows, home with us today."