The Making of the Constitution

Dr. Gordon S. Wood, professor of American History at Brown University, was born in Concord Massachusetts, on November 27, 1933. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa Air Force, and he earned the A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University.

A specialist in Colonial American and Early National history, Professor Wood taught at William and Mary (1964-1966), Harvard (1966-1967), and the University of Michigan (1967-1969) before joining the faculty at Brown. In 1982-1983 he served as Pitt Professor of American History at Cambridge University, England, and from 1983 to 1986 he chaired the Department of History at Brown.

Professor Wood has written Representation in the American Revolution (1969), The Creation of the American Republic (1969), Revolution and the Political Integration of the Enslaved and Disfranchised (1974), and Social Radicalism and Equality in the American Revolution (1977), and he has edited The Rising Glory of America, 1760-1820 (1971) and The Confederation and the Constitution (1973).

He has contributed selections to numerous anthologies and collective works including Leadership in the American Revolution (1974), We Americans (1975), The Book of the States (1976), New directions in American Intellectual History (1979), How Democratic is the Constitution? (1980), The Constitution and the Budget (1980), and This Constitution: Our Enduring Legacy (1986).

Also, Professor Wood has published a number of articles in scholarly and popular journals, among them the William and Mary Quarterly, New England Quarterly, Brown Alumni Magazine, New York History, and National Forum.

Professor's Wood's scholarship and teaching have won him the De Lancey K. Jay Prize (1963-1964) and the Toppan Prize (1964) from Harvard University, the John H. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association (1970), the Bancroft Prize from the Columbia University (19710), the Kerr Prize from the New York Historical Society (1981), and the Douglass Adair Award (1984).

Although teaching and writing are his primary interests, Professor Wood has served his profession in a variety of capacities. He has been a member of the fellowship committee of the American Antiquarian Society, the American Historical Committee for the Bicentennial Celebration of the American Revolution, the Program Committee of the Organization of American Historians, the Merle Curti Book Award Committee of the Organization of American Historians, the Board of Editors of the Journal of American History and Eighteenth Century Studies, the Board of Advisors of the History Book Club, the National Historical Society, and the Society for Historians of the Early Republic. He is currently president of the Society of Historians of the Early Republic.