Dr. Quintard Taylor, Jr.

United States Colonial historian Robert Lawrence Middlekauff is the fifth scholar to hold the Bullitt Chair in American History at the University of Washington, Seattle, occupying the chair in October of 1987.  Fresh out of graduate school, Middlekauff began his professional teaching career at the University of California, Berkeley in 1962.  With the exception of a five year period as the head of the Huntington Library in Pasadena (1983-88) and as the Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University (1996-97), Middlekauff has spent his entire academic career at Berkeley.  While at Berkeley Middlekauff served as the Chair of the History Department from 1978 to 1981 and again from 1997 to 1998.  He was also Dean of Social Sciences between 1974 and 1977 and Provost and Dean of the College of Letters and Science between 1981 and 1983.

Born July 5, 1929 in Yakima, Washington, Middlekauff received his B.A. from the University of Washington in 1952.  From 1952 to 1954, he served in Korea and Japan as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps.  Following his military service, Middlekauff pursued his graduate education earning a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1961.  Middlekauff’s most well-known works include Ancients and Axioms: Secondary Education in Eighteen-Century New England (1963), The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (1971), The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (1986) and most recently, Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies (1996).  The Mathers was awarded the Bancroft Prize in American History in 1972. 

Middlekauff retired in 2000 and is currently the Preston Hotchkis Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.  Since his retirement, Professor Middlekauff’s scholarly interests have shifted from the colonial era to the nineteenth century and the work of Mark Twain.

Sources:
Berkeley Emeriti Times, January 2004, http://thecenter.berkeley.edu/pdf/ucbeajan04.pdf

Authored By: Deborah McNally, University of Washington, Seattle