The American professor, writer, and scholar Gertrude Himmelfarb (born 1922) was noted for her work on Victorian intellectual history and for her conservative point of view.

Gertrude Himmelfarb was born in Brooklyn, New York, on August 8, 1922, the daughter of Bertha and Max Himmelfarb, a manufacturer. She graduated from New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn in 1939 and attended Brooklyn College, studying history and philosophy. She graduated from Brooklyn College in 1942 and in the same year married Irving Kristol but retained her maiden name for professional purposes. In the late 1990s, one writer wrote: "No family has had a greater impact on today's conservatism than the Kristols," writes Jacob Weisberg in the New Yorker of [then] editor Bill; his mother, historian Gertrude Himmelfarb; and his father, public philosopher Irving.

The young couple moved to Chicago, where Himmelfarb began graduate work in history at the University of Chicago. Himmelfarb wrote her Master's...