| 1 | Name: | Dr. Oscar Handlin | |
| Institution: | Harvard University | ||
| Year Elected: | 1999 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1915 | ||
| Death Date: | September 20, 2011 | ||
Oscar Handlin ranks as one of the most prolific and influential American historians of the twentieth century, with pioneering works in the fields of immigration history, ethnic history, and social history. He began his long career at Harvard University in 1939, becoming a full professor in 1954. At a time when most historians of the U.S. were wholly absorbed by the frontier thesis of Professor F. J. Turner, Dr. Handlin turned his attention to another movement westward: that of Eastern Europeans, many of them Jews, to the United States. Dr. Handlin's best known work, The Uprooted, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize, is to some extent autobiographical. His many other books include The American People in the Twentieth Century; Race and Nationality in American Life; and Boston's Immigrants, 1790-1880. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; the Massachusetts Historical Society; the Colonial Society of Massachusetts; and the American Jewish Historical Society. Oscar Handlin died on September 20, 2011, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at age 97. | |||