Capriles, Miguel Angel de

Miguel (Mike) Angel de Capriles was born on November 30, 1906, in Mexico City. His family moved to the United States in 1920, and he graduated from the High School of Commerce in New York City in 1924. In 1924 de Capriles began a long and prolific association with NYU that would last until 1974, when he enrolled as an undergraduate at Washington Square College. Graduating cum laude with a B.S. in 1927, he became an Administrative Officer and an instructor in the Economics Department following his graduation. In 1931 de Capriles received an M.A. in Economics, and in 1935 he received a J.D. from the School of Law. He married Dorothy W. Hafner, a fellow fencer and NYU School of Law graduate, in 1938.

Except for a brief hiatus from NYU during World War II, when he worked in Washington, D.C., for the Department of Justice, de Capriles served in numerous administrative offices and as a law professor, specializing in corporate law and finance, from 1935 until his retirement in 1974. Among his many positions at the University, he founded the Inter-American Law Institute at NYU in 1947, served as the director of the Office of Institutional Research and Educational Planning from 1953-63, was the Dean of the NYU School of Law from 1964-67, and served as the Vice President and General Counsel of NYU from 1967-74. In 1974, de Capriles was named Distinguished Professor of Law at Hastings College, University of California, San Francisco. He died in San Francisco in 1981 at the age of 75.

De Capriles was also a world-renowned fencer, having taken up the sport as an undergraduate at NYU. Ranked consistently as one of the top ten fencers in the US from 1935-51, de Capriles won 10 national individual fencing titles during his career. He was also a member of the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team from 1932-52, winning two bronze metals (1932 in epée and 1948 in saber). He continued to be actively involved in fencing after his retirement from competition in 1952, serving as president of the International Fencing Federation and working with the U.S. Olympic committee. He is a member of the NYU Sports Hall of Fame.

Sources:

Miguel Angel de Capriles Biographical File. NYU Archives.

From the guide to the Miguel A. de Capriles Papers, 1920-1972, (New York University Archives)