Edward Walterscheid (`69)

Edward C. Walterscheid, a highly respected legal historian and former Los Alamos resident, died on July 7, 2011 after a short bout with cancer. He was 75.

Walterscheid was born and raised in Carlsbad. In 1961, he earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of New Mexico, after which he spent five years as a technical writer. He returned to UNM and earned his J.D. in 1969 from the UNM School of Law.

He spent his entire career as a lawyer with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, first as a patent attorney and later as deputy laboratory counsel. Upon his retirement from the lab in 1997, he began a new career as a legal historian, specializing in the history of intellectual property law in the United States.

Throughout his life Walterscheid was an avid reader and writer. He published more than 40 articles, most of them dealing either with intellectual property law or the history of intellectual property law. He also authored two books dealing with the history of patent law in the United States. At the time of his death, Walterscheid  was working on a third book about the history of U.S. patent law. His last thoughts were of his family and how proud he was of them.

He had moved to Summerlin, Nev., and is survived by his wife of 52 years, Jerre; his two sons, Jeffrey and Steven; five grandsons and two sisters, Charlene Conlin and Janet Wheeler.