In Memorium: Professor Olga Soffer

The Department of Anthropology mourns the passing of Professor Emerita Olga Soffer. Olga Soffer, a University of Illinois archaeologist whose meticulous re-examination of Upper Paleolithic artifacts overturned decades of assumptions about prehistoric life — and about the women who lived it — died on June 20, 2026, at her home in Los Angeles, of natural causes. She passed peacefully. She was 83. Read the full obituary here.