Marcel Dekker, a Greenwich resident who founded the Marcel Dekker Inc. publishing company, passed away on Aug. 7 at the age of 90.
Dekker was born in Amsterdam in 1931 and immigrated to the U.S. in 1938, settling in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. He briefly studied at the University of Vermont before enlisting in the U.S. Air Force in 1950, serving through 1955. He completed his education at New York University, graduating with a bachelor”™s degree in 1958.
Dekker went to work for his father’s publishing company, Interscience Publishing Inc., which merged with John Wiley & Sons in 1962. One year later, he founded his own publishing company, Marcel Dekker Inc.
Dekker”™s company specialized in scientific, technical, and medical books and journals. He served as its president through 1997 and then became its chairman of the board. Marcel Dekker Inc. was sold in 2004 to the British company Taylor & Francis plc for $138.6 million. At the time of its sale, Marcel Dekker Inc. had a 170-person workforce and published 200 new books a year, along with 78 journals, while maintaining a backlist of more than 3,000 titles.
