WASHINGTON — Ken Starr, the independent counsel whose investigation uncovered a White House sex scandal that riveted the nation and led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment for lying under oath and obstructing justice, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Houston. He was 76.

His wife, Alice Starr, said he had spent the last 17 weeks at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center fighting an undisclosed illness and died of complications of surgery, but gave no further details.

For a time, Mr. Starr was a household name and his investigation into Mr. Clinton’s affair with a former White House intern, Monica S. Lewinsky, propelled issues of sex, morality, accountability and ideology to the center of American life for more than a year.

He became a Rorschach test for the post-Cold War generation, a hero to his admirers for taking on an indecent president who despoiled the Oval Office and a villain to his detractors who saw him as a sex-obsessed Inspector Javert driven by partisanship. His investigation tested the boundaries of the Constitution when it prompted the first impeachment of a president in 130 years and scarred both Mr. Clinton’s legacy and his own