Kaufman, Irving (Robert) (1910–1992)

US judge. He was named to the federal bench for the Southern District of New York in 1949. In March 1951 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried in his court and found guilty of passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. He sentenced both to death, the first such peacetime sentences in US history. Kaufman was elevated to the US Court of Appeals bench in 1961.

Born in New York City, he graduated from Fordham University and Fordham Law School, and worked for a private firm. As a government attorney in the mid-1930s, he prosecuted several notorious New York City cases and became known as the ‘boy prosecutor’.