BOSTON – Howard Gotlieb, an archivist for Boston University who collected personal papers from an eclectic mix of contemporary authors, actors and politicians, died Thursday from complications after surgery. He was 79.

Born in 1926 in Bangor, Maine, Gotlieb worked as a U.S. Army Signal Corps archivist in postwar Germany. He later earned graduate degrees at Columbia and Oxford universities, and after returning to the U.S. he taught history at Yale University and served as a curator and archivist there for seven years. Gotlieb became director of BU’s department of special collections in 1963, specializing in the papers and artifacts from some of the 20th century’s best-known figures.

The collection included contributions from Martin Luther King Jr., authors Isaac Asimov and David Halberstam, actor Fred Astaire, actresses Bette Davis and Angela Lansbury, former U.S. House Speaker John W. McCormack and former television news anchor Dan Rather.

Halberstam said he thought Gotlieb was joking when he asked him for his personal papers shortly after he returned from covering the Vietnam War.

“Now some 41 years and 19 books later, I realize that he sensed something in me that I had not realized about myself,” Halberstam said in a statement issued by BU. “I loved dealing with him. Howard Gotlieb was subtle and joyous, a very special citizen of Boston, and he will be missed.”

Rather called Gotlieb a “national treasure.”

“He was a first-rate scholar, a premium expert in his field and a friend of mine for more than 40 years,” Rather said.

In 2003, 40 years after Gotlieb founded BU’s collection, the school renamed it the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.

Gotlieb left no immediate family members.

A memorial service will be held at Marsh Chapel on the Boston University campus on Jan. 6.