Remembering Gordon Wood

The National Endowment for the Humanities mourns the passing of National Humanities Medalist Gordon S. Wood, who died at the age of 92 on June 8, 2026. A preeminent scholar of the American Revolution and the Founding era, Wood profoundly reshaped our understanding of the individuals and intellectual currents that propelled the creation of the United States.

"Gordon Wood was a paramount scholar and educator, deeply invested in documenting the motives, influences, and legacy of America's founders," said NEH Acting Chairman William English. "As we celebrate America's 250th anniversary this year, we owe much of our understanding of the nation's origins and the ideals that underpinned them to Wood's prolific writing and research."

A professor emeritus of history at Brown University, where he taught from 1969 to 2008, Wood was the author of ten books on the Founding era, including such influential works as the Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992), andThe Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969), which was awarded the 1970 Bancroft Prize. His most recent book Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution was published in 2021. In his scholarly books and articles Wood drew on extensive research on personal, political, and religious primary documents and correspondence of the early Republic to demonstrate, as he wrote in Radicalism, that the Revolution was "the most radical and far-reaching event in American history."

In 2011, Wood was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama "for scholarship that provides insight into the founding of the nation and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution." He was also the recipient of two NEH grant awards, a summer stipend grant in 1967 and a 1972 NEH research award to work on a book on "the origins, nature and development of American culture during the early Republic, roughly from 1760 to 1820."

National Endowment for the Humanities:The National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at neh.gov.