His father was born in Bessarabia. Maury A. Kravitz was born in Philadelphia. He moved to Chicago when he was 7 or 8 after his father, a writer, took a job with a Jewish newspaper. He grew up on the West Side and attended Marshall High School before attending the University of Illinois at its old Navy Pier campus. He went on to The John Marshall Law School in Chicago but was drafted af- ter his first vear. He served three years with the Army in Germany before returning to finish law school in 1959, the same year he married the former Mona Wallace. Mr. Kravitz later left law for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where he became a successful gold and currency trader and later an options and futures trader. Mr. Kravitz, who assembled a library of more than 400 volumes on Genghis Khan and the Mongolian Empire, said in a 1994 Chicago Tribune story that his ad- miration for Genghis Khan grew out of his ability to overcome obstacles to become the most important ruler of his era. Bill Kurtis met Mr. Kravitz afterreading about his quest in an in-flight magazine. He went with him to Mongolia and sent a film crew from his Kurtis Productions. The resulting documentary aired on the A&E; network about six years ago, and an excerpt is part of a current exhibit on Genghis Khan at The Field Museum in Chicago. Mr. Kravitz managed to win approval for his expedition from the Mongolian government.