ANOTHER OBITUARY of Samuel Iwry appears in today's Washington Post. It has some interesting information on his research at the time the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered:

In 1947, the couple immigrated to the United States through San Francisco and moved to Baltimore, where Mr. Iwry resumed his studies. Albright assigned him to work on the Damascus document, a medieval Hebrew text that required someone who had a familiarity and ease with classical Hebrew.

When the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, beginning in 1948, the language in the Damascus document turned out to be so crucial to verifying the scrolls' authenticity that scholars consider its study to be the beginning of scroll scholarship.

"He was literally working on one of the most important Dead Sea Scrolls before they were discovered," said Kyle McCarter, a professor and former chairman of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins. "It was Albright's knowledge and recognition that something was going on and [Iwry's] skills and education" that enabled the pair to authenticate the scrolls' antiquity and significance.

As more scrolls were discovered into the early 1950s, scholars kept a special phone line between Jerusalem and Baltimore, through London. As Israeli scholars reported what was on the scrolls, Mr. Iwry was on the phone with Albright, giving him "a kind of intimate involvement with the scrolls that people don't know about," McCarter said. Mr. Iwry wrote the first doctoral dissertation on the scrolls and was regarded throughout his life as the expert on them. He completed his doctorate degree in 1951 at Johns Hopkins.