| 1 | Name: | Dr. Gordon S. Wood | |
| Institution: | Brown University | ||
| Year Elected: | 1994 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1933 | ||
Gordon Wood has earned international distinction as an interpreter of 18th century colonial American and United States history. His first book, The Creation of the Republic (1969), is a stunning work of scholarship and exposition that won two of the most important book awards open to historians. Dr. Wood's 1992 work The Radicalism of the American Revolution has also won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for History, and is considered among the definitive works on the social, political and economic consequences of the Revolution. Dr. Wood has taught at Brown University, where he is Alva O. Way University Professor Emeritus. He has also served on the faculties of the College of William and Mary (1964-66), Harvard (1966-67), and the University of Michigan (1967-69). A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Society for Historians of the Early Republic, Dr. Wood also served for a number of years as chairman of the National Historical Society; as a consultant to the National Constitution Center and to the United States Capitol renovation; and on the Board of Trustees for Colonial Williamsburg. His most recent books include The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2004), Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (2006),The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (2007), the American History Book Prize winning Empire of Liberty (2009), The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States (2011), and Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (2017). He was awarded the 2010 National Humanities Medal by President Obama, the Centennial Medal by Harvard University Graduate School in 2015, and the Luminary Award of the Precision Medecine World Conference in 2018. Gordon Wood was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1994. | |||