Author Samuel Huntington dead at 81

OAKS BLUFF, Mass., Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Harvard University political scientist Samuel Huntington has died in Oak Bluffs, Mass. at the age of 81, said friends and colleagues.

Huntington died at an Oaks Bluffs nursing home, the Boston Globe reported Sunday.

"He was a man of enormous influence," said colleague Henry Rosovsky, calling Huntington one of the "great figures in the field" of political science.

Huntington, who died Wednesday, gained notice in 1957 with his first book, "The Soldier and the State: the Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations." The book was so influential it merited a 50th anniversary symposium at West Point, the Globe noted.

Huntington served President Jimmy Carter as coordinator of security planning for the National Security Council and in the 1980s was a member of the Presidential Commission on Long-Term Integrated Strategy.

Huntington, who was born in New York, graduated from Yale at age 18 and obtained a master's degree from the University of Chicago, a doctorate from Harvard and began teaching at Harvard at age 23, where he remained for six decades.

Huntington is survived by his wife, Nancy, two sons, Nicholas of Newton, Mass., and Timothy of Boston; and four grandchildren.