On Sunday, April 27, Paul E. Sigmund, 85, who retired in 2005 as a politics professor at Princeton University, died of complications from pneumonia at University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro.

His wife, Barbara Boggs Sigmund, was mayor of Princeton from 1984 to her death at age 51 in 1990.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Sigmund earned a bachelor's degree, summa cum laude, at Georgetown University in 1950, studied on a Fulbright scholarship in 1950-51 at the University of Durham, England, and earned a master's at Harvard University in 1954 and a doctorate there in 1959.

In 1956-57, as a lieutenant, he was a political analyst at the European headquarters of the Air Force in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Mr. Sigmund was director of the Latin American Studies Program at Princeton in 1969-70 and for several terms in the 1980s and 1990s.

Among Mr. Sigmund's several books, Liberation Theology at the Crossroads: Democracy or Revolution was published by Oxford University Press in 1990.

Among his several appointments, Mr. Sigmund was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington in 1985-86.

He is survived by two brothers and two sisters, sons Stephen, David, and Paul IV, and four grandchildren.

A visitation is set from 6 to 9 p.m., Thursday, May 1, at Stuart Country Day School for the Sacred Heart, 1200 Stuart Road, Princeton. A Funeral Mass will take place at 1:30 p.m., Friday, May 2, at the Princeton University Chapel. Burial is to be in the Princeton Cemetery. A reception will follow at Prospect House at 3 p.m.

Donations may be sent to www.handstogether.org.