Samuel Eliot Morison,
Rear Admiral,
United States Naval Reserve (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of
maritime history that were both authoritative and highly readable. He received his Ph.D. from
Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years. He won
Pulitzer Prizes for
Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of
Christopher Columbus, and
John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In 1942, he was commissioned by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt to write a
history of United States naval operations in
World War II, which was published in 15 volumes between 1947 and 1962. He retired from the navy in 1951 as a rear admiral. Morison wrote the popular
Oxford History of the American People (1965), and co-authored the classic textbook
The Growth of the American Republic (1930) with Henry Steele Commager. Over the course of his distinguished career, Morison received eleven honorary doctoral degrees, including degrees from
Harvard University (1936),
Columbia University (1942),
Yale University (1949), and the
University of Oxford (1951). Morison also garnered numerous literary prizes, military honors, and national awards from both foreign countries and the United States, including two
Pulitzer Prizes, two
Bancroft Prizes, the
Balzan Prize, the
Legion of Merit, and the
Presidential Medal of Freedom.