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Walter J. Johnson, 88, Refugee Who Founded Academic Press

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December 23, 1996, Section B, Page 10Buy Reprints
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Walter J. Johnson, who fled Germany after Hitler seized his family's publishing business and founded Academic Press in New York, a major publisher of scientific books and journals, died Dec. 15 at his home in Manhattan. He was 88.

Mr. Johnson was the fifth generation of his family to own and operate a publishing company in Leipzig that specialized in scientific books and journals. After the Nazis seized the family's business in the late 1930's, along with most publishing operations in Germany, Mr. Johnson and his brother-in-law, Kurt Jacoby, and their wives, moved to New York, and in 1941, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jacoby opened Academic Press.

They owned and ran the company for nearly 30 years, with Mr. Jacoby taking charge of the editorial side and Mr. Johnson, as chief executive, the financial and business end. Revenues grew to more than $40 million from a stable of authors that included Albert Einstein. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich purchased Academic Press in 1970, soon after Mr. Jacoby's death.

Mr. Johnson, who served on Harcourt Brace's board for 25 years, also continued to own and run two small companies, Walter J. Johnson Inc., which deals in rare books, and the Ablex Publishing Corporation, which publishes reference books. The offices of both are in Norwood, N.J., and Mr. Johnson had gone to his office on the Friday before his death.

Mr. Johnson, who was born in Leipzig, had studied at the University of Heidelberg, the Sorbonne in Paris, and University College in London. He had joined the family business, run then by his father, and was in his late 20's when it was seized and he left Germany. He served in the National Guard from 1941 to 1944.

Mr. Johnson's wife, Thelka, died in 1986.

He is survived by a son, Herbert, of Greenwich, Conn.; two daughters, Marianne Cruikshank of Manhattan and Aspen, Colo., and Marjorie Hewett of Manhattan; nine grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 10 of the National edition with the headline: Walter J. Johnson, 88, Refugee Who Founded Academic Press. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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