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While most knew Harvard Business School professor Arthur Schleifer Jr. for his data-driven business strategies and his innovative teaching curriculum, Schleifer was also immersed in literature and had a love for solving crossword puzzles.

Schleifer’s wife, Rebecca Alssid Schleifer, recalled her husband’s impressive abilities across a variety of interests.

“I remember him reciting Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, not only the Prologue but more, not in English but in perfect Middle English just like it was his native language,” Alssid Schleifer wrote.

“I can never ever forget him getting up at 3 in the morning to do his Wordle and the Crossword Puzzle, getting a genius designation and completing the crossword and the spelling bee,” she added.

Arthur Schleifer taught at HBS for 33 years, with a focus in managerial economics, before retiring in 1998. He died on Aug. 28 at the age of 94 and is survived by his wife, Alssid Schleifer; his sons, Arthur III and David Schleifer; two stepchildren, Vanessa and Julian Alssid; and seven grandchildren. One daughter, Caroline, preceded him in death.

Schleifer graduated from Yale University in 1952 with a degree in physics and philosophy, before earning a Masters in Business Administration in 1954 and a Doctorate in Business Administration in 1961, both from HBS.

Before teaching at HBS, Schleifer was an associate professor at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College and served as a visiting professor at New York University.

After Schleifer retired from HBS in 1998, he served as the chair of the finance committee at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

HBS professor David E. Bell, who taught alongside Schleifer, praised him for innovating new software programs for students used in the school’s courses and academic programs for data analysis, which he wrote “are still easier to use than Excel.”

“He was a deeply knowledgeable statistician. He helped many HBS doctoral students navigate the data aspects of their work. He created software to make the application of statistics user-friendly for our students,” Bell wrote. “His work was very practical.”

HBS Professor Tarun Khanna also looked up to Schleifer when he first started teaching at HBS, remembering him as a “reassuring presence next door.”

“Arthur was my ‘neighbor’ in the adjacent office when I moved into Morgan Hall as a rookie professor at HBS in July 1993. Obviously incredibly accomplished, it was refreshing that he was the kindest soul, always smiling and gentle,” Khanna wrote.

“Having a reassuring presence next door – our office doors were always ajar – is really what I recall most fondly,” Khanna added.

Outside of academia, Schleifer loved his family, HBS professor Louis T. Wells wrote.

“Art thoroughly enjoyed life with Yvette, a Paris-born concert pianist, his wife of 54 years and mother of his three children.”

“After her death in 2015, he was unbelievably fortunate to find another joyful and caring wife, Rebecca Alssid, retired director of culinary arts and wine programs at BU, who was with him until his death,” Wells added.

Alssid Schleifer wrote that she and her husband were “so loving and kind to one another.”

“We were a match made in heaven,” she added.

Wells also recounted Schleifer’s diverse interests and hobbies, ranging from the arts to culture, which he remembers from celebrations that Schleifer hosted for friends and family.

“Their annual July 4 parties brought together people who reflected Art’s various interests – music, photography, science, travel, business, and good food – all in his condo directly overlooking the fireworks barges in the Charles River,” Wells wrote. “The broad-ranging interests of his friends led to conversations similar to those one might have encountered in a European salon of old.”

“He was a very interesting gentle man, who was an intellectual and who fit into all levels of society and education,” Alssid Schleifer wrote.

—Staff writer Evan H.C. Epstein can be reached at evan.epstein@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X at @Evan_HC_Epstein.

—Staff writer Graham W. Lee can be reached at graham.lee@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @grahamwonlee.