“From Professor McCraw’s painstaking edits of every book review and chapter I turned in, I learned how to write,” she said. “To this day, each time I remove an unnecessary comma from a sentence, I think of him.”

Often suffering from back pain, Dr. McGraw used special chairs in his office and attended faculty meetings by lying on a portable chaise lounge he carried with him, friends said. He had endured poor health since his late 40s, according to his wife.

“He coped with such adversity when I was working with him,” MacIver Neiva recalled. “He was very private about it. He never gave any indication that anything in his life came close to the importance of what I was telling him about.”

In addition to his wife, Dr. McCraw leaves a daughter, Elizabeth McCarron of Wellesley; a son, Thomas Jr. of Bedford, N.H.; a brother, John of Gainesville, Fla.; and three granddaughters.

A service has been held. Burial was in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

Geoffrey G. Jones, a Harvard business professor who chairs the school’s Business History Initiative, said Dr. McCraw was “a true leader and institution builder.”