Dr. Samuel Huntington - one of the finest political scientists, a very venerable professor at Harvard University, and the founder of the prominent Foreign Policy journal - died on Wednesday at a nursing facility in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. He was 81.

Huntington is survived by his wife Nancy; two sons, Nicholas and Timothy; and four grandchildren.

Born in 1927 in New York City, Dr. Huntington graduated from Yale University in 1946. After a brief service in the Army, he received a master's degree from the University of Chicago, followed by his doctorate from Harvard in 1951. Thereon, he began his 58-year-long teaching career at Harvard, from which he retired in 2007. He had a short stint as president of the American Political Science Association, from 1986-1987.

In his controversial book, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," Huntington focused on religion as a source of conflict in the world, after the Cold War period. Published in 1996, the book prompted an extensive debate on the conflicting relations between the Western and Islamic worlds.

In spite of the criticism of his book, Huntington's hypothesis was simplistic - Edward Said, a scholar from Middle East, explained it as "West versus the rest" - and his views unconventional and amazingly prophetic, with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US a testimony!

In 2007, Huntington told Islamica magazine: "My argument remains that cultural identities, antagonisms and affiliations will not only play a role, but play a major role in relations between states."