Paul Wallace Gates (December 14, 1901 – January 5, 1999) was a professor of history and general historian who is widely considered to be the foremost authority on the history of federal land policy in the United States. Gates wrote 10 books and 75 academic articles, and his ''magnum opus'' was ''History of Public Land Law Development''.
Life and career
Gates was born in
Nashua, New Hampshire
Nashua is a city in southern New Hampshire, United States. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it had a population of 91,322, the second-largest in northern New England after nearby Manchester, New Hampshire, Manchester. Along with Manc ...
, son of a Protestant minister. His undergraduate work was chiefly at
Colby College
Colby College is a private liberal arts college in Waterville, Maine. It was founded in 1813 as the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, then renamed Waterville College after the city where it resides. The donations of Christian philant ...
(B.S., 1924), although he also attended
Clark University
Clark University is a private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1887 with a large endowment from its namesake Jonas Gilman Clark, a prominent businessman, Clark was one of the first modern research universities in the ...
(A.M., 1925) and the
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
. He earned his PhD from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 1930, working under the direction of
Frederick Merk. Gates' PhD thesis was the basis of his first book, ''The Illinois Central Railroad and Its Colonization Work'' (1934), for which he was awarded the
David A. Wells Prize at Harvard. Gates was an instructor at Harvard (1929-1930) while working on his doctorate, and after receiving his PhD he worked for the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and taught at
Bucknell University
Bucknell University is a private liberal arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1846 as the University at Lewisburg, it now consists of the College of Arts and Sciences, Freeman College of Management, and the College of Engineering ...
(1930-1936).
In 1935 Gates began his career at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
, where he did the majority of his academic work. From 1946 to 1956 he was the Chair of the
Department of History. He eventually earned the honor of being named the John Stambaugh Professor of History. Aside from his research, he was a renowned professor of undergraduate courses and had 23 PhD students, many of whom became leaders in the profession as well. He emphasized with these students interdisciplinary studies, a characteristic of Gates himself. After he retired in 1971, he continued writing many seminal works on the subject of land law and well into his 90s was still being honored as the foremost leader in this field.
Gates wrote on many separate regions, with a focus on the upper Midwest and California. Although his early career interests were in federal land policy in general, as he himself once said, "It soon became apparent that before a history of the Public Domain could be written, special and regional studies would have to be prepared to show the functioning of the land system in a number of fairly typical states and smaller subdivisions."
Gates was married for over 60 years to Lillian Cowdell Gates, who had an independent academic career and also collaborated with Paul on several books. They had 4 children and 17 grandchildren. After Lillian died, Paul remarried. He died in Oakland, California, where he had lived briefly late in his retirement. Among the honorary degrees that he received were the hon. L.H.D. from Colby College (1967), and the hon. LL.D. from the
University of Maine
The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the Flagship universities, flagshi ...
(1968).
[''Directory of American Scholars'', 6th ed. (Bowker, 1974), Vol. I, p. 216.]
Bibliography
In addition to the references above, the following selected list of works is provided since his writings define who Gates was. Most of these works are by Gates but some of them are ''about'' Gates.
Books and other monographs
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* Reprint edition available for sale October 31, 2013.
Journal articles
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References
Sources
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gates, Paul Wallace
1901 births
1999 deaths
Historians of the United States
Colby College alumni
Harvard University alumni
Cornell University Department of History faculty
Presidents of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association
20th-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
20th-century American male writers