Obituary: Pew Research Founding Director Andy Kohut

Pew Research founding Director, pollster and nonpartisan news commentator Andy Kohut died yesterday in John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore after a six-year battle with lymphocytic leukemia. He was 73.

Kohut (pictured) was born in Newark, NJ. He graduated with a BA from Seton Hall University, and was attending graduate school at Rutgers University when he dropped out to join The Gallup Organization, where he worked under founders George Gallup and Paul Perry. He later served as the firm's President from 1979 to 1989, before leaving to found opinion research firm Princeton Survey Research Associates, which specialized in media, politics and public policy. In 1990, he became the founding Director of Surveys for the Times Mirror Center.

From 2004 to 2012 he served as the Pew Research Center's President, and he directed its Center for the People & the Press from 1993 to 2012, and also ran its Global Attitudes Project. At the end of 2012, he stepped down from his roles, but agreed to stay on as a Senior Research Adviser, focusing on international and domestic public opinion analysis.

During his career, Kohut was a regular guest on national public radio and TV news programs, and the editorial pages of newspapers such as the New York Times, where he presented Pew's polling results and analysis. In addition, he served as President of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and the National Council on Public Polls, and he co-authored four books, the most recent of which is entitled America Against the World. In 2000, Kohut won the New York AAPOR Chapter Award for Outstanding Contribution to Opinion Research, and in 2005 he was awarded AAPOR's highest honor, its Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement.

In a statement on Pew's web site, President Michael Dimock commented: 'Andy's importance reaches far beyond Pew Research Center, as he was a standard-setter and innovator for the entire survey research community. I believe the key to his success was rooted in his fundamental respect for people. He believed that people trust us with their views, and that it's our obligation to gather them reliably and respectfully, and to analyze and assess what people tell us with the utmost care. In an era when many numbers, including polling, have become increasingly automated and commodified, Andy always reminded us that the 'public' in public opinion is not an indiscriminate force. It is people. We will miss Andy greatly, but his tremendous legacy will live on with us in the years to come'.