Passages: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Brown professor emeritus of history Gordon S. Wood

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - Gordon S. Wood, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution and professor emeritus of history at Brown University, died on Sunday, June 7, 2026.

Wood, who was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2011 by President Barack Obama "for scholarship that provides insight into the founding of the nation and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution," was a prolific scholar who continued to publish and speak about American history until shortly before his death.

Tragically, Wood was the victim of a motor vehicle/pedestrian accident, according to the East Providence (R.I.) Police Department. He was 92 years old.

"A preeminent scholar of American history, Gordon Wood helped countless readers understand the events and forces that led to the birth of the United States with depth, nuance and clarity," said Brown President Christina H. Paxson. "He was an inspiring teacher, a generous mentor and a deeply treasured member of the Brown University community for decades. We mourn the loss of a towering historian whose insights will inform both academic scholarship and public understanding for generations to come."

Wood wrote 10 books, including "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1993. His first book, "The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787," won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in 1970. His most recent book, "Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution" was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. He co-authored and edited numerous others.

"Gordon Wood focused on what he saw as the expanding political possibilities manifested in the ideas of the American Revolution and then the Federal Constitution," said Tara Nummedal, chair of the Department of History at Brown. "He conceptualized the American experiment as one of enormous potential. He never lost his energy for sharing that vision of a past with enormous meaning for the present."

Wood, who retired from Brown in 2008 after a 39-year tenure, returned to campus frequently for speaking engagements, including a March 2025 conversation titled "Creation of the American Republic" at the John Carter Brown Library with its director and librarian Karin Wulf.

Wood was about to receive an award for his "unparallelled contributions to history and to education" from Brown 2026 - a campus-wide initiative to demonstrate the important role of research and teaching universities in fostering open and democratic societies - and the Rhode Island Historical Society at a June gala commemorating the United States semiquincentennial, said Wulf, who co-directs Brown 2026.

"Gordon is genuinely the preeminent historian of the American founding period, which makes the timing of his death in this semiquincentennial year all the more tragic," said Wulf, also a professor of history at Brown. "He was deeply publicly engaged and was writing for the public up until his last few months."

Wulf said reading Wood's book "The Creation of the American Republic" as a college undergraduate inspired her to become a historian: "I read it over a weekend, which is saying something because it's a big book and because it's an incredibly powerful depiction of the politics of the early republic and what it took to wrestle a constitution out of a really complex situation."

Wood earned a bachelor's degree from Tufts University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at Harvard and the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at Brown in 1969.

Nummedal noted that Wood was one of those rare scholars who became a public figure. He was cited in the 1997 film "Good Will Hunting," as well as by former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich.

Honored by the nation

Obama honored Wood with a 2010 National Humanities Medal alongside honorees including authors Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates. Previous winners include Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, novelist John Updike, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, sociologist Robert Coles and filmmaker Steven Spielberg.

"As a brilliant scholar and gifted teacher, Gordon Wood has made unique contributions to scholarship, enriching our understanding of American history," then-Brown President Ruth J. Simmons said in 2011, when the award was presented. "This well-deserved tribute acknowledges the importance of his contributions to the nation."

Wood's volume in the Oxford History of the United States, "Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815," was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in history. The Pulitzer committee described it as "a lucid exploration of a turbulent era when a profoundly changing America, despite the sin of slavery, came to see itself as a beacon to the world."

Wood was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

"After a half a century or more of studying history, I don't think there are any easy lessons that you come away with," Wood once said of his field. "I think it teaches one big lesson, which I would equate with wisdom - that things don't quite work out the way one intends, and that you have to be willing to accept the limitations of life."

When he was awarded the National Humanities Medal, Wood said he hoped it would draw attention to the field of history, which he called the "ultimate humanistic discipline." "We don't teach history because we want to have history teachers or history professors," he said at the time. "We're teaching history because it enriches lives."