Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison, RAdm, USNR (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian, notable for producing scholarly works that were both authoritative and highly readable, an ability recognized with two Pulitzer Prizes.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts to John Holmes Morison (1856–1911) and Emily Marshall Eliot (1857–1925) and named for his grandfather Samuel Eliot, he attended Harvard University, acquiring a BA in 1908 and a Ph.D. in 1912. Although he taught at the University of California, Berkeley and Oxford University (1922–1925), he spent most of his 40-year career at Harvard, starting in 1915, chairing the title Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History in 1941, and retiring in 1955. He received the Balzan prize for history 1962 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.
Morison combined his personal interest in sailing with his professional activities when he chartered a boat and sailed to the various places that Christopher Columbus had supposedly visited.
In 1942, he was appointed into the United States Naval Reserve with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, for the purpose of developing first-hand knowledge of the war. The result was the unmatched History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, a work in 15 volumes that covered every aspect of the war, from strategic planning to individual exploits. For his efforts, the Navy rewarded Morison with the rank of Rear Admiral. The celebrated British military historian Sir John Keegan has hailed Morison's official history one of the best ever written. One of his research assistants on that project, Henry Salomon, went on to conceive the epic NBC documentary series Victory at Sea.
The frigate, USS Samuel Eliot Morison (FFG-13), was named in his honor.
Works
(Most of these have been reprinted and reissued numerous times.)
- The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765–1848 (1913)
- The Oxford History of the United States (1927)
- The Growth of the American Republic (with Henry Steele Commager) (1930)
- Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636–1936 (Harvard University Press, 1936)
- Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (1942)
- History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (1947–1962)
- Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647 (ed.) (1952)
- John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (Little, Brown and Company, 1959)
- The Story of Mount Desert Island (1960)
- The Two-Ocean War (1963)
- The Oxford History of the American People (1965)
- Builders of the Bay Colony (1930)
- The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (1971)
- Samuel De Champlain: Father of New France (1972)
- The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages (1974)
- A Concise History of the American Republic (with Henry Steele Commager and William E. Leuchtenberg) (1976)