Preserved Smith (July 22, 1880 – May 15, 1941) was an American historian of the Protestant Reformation. He was the son of

Henry Preserved Smith Henry Preserved Smith (October 12, 1847 – February 26, 1927) was an American biblical scholar. Smith was born in Troy, Ohio. He graduated at Amherst College in 1869 and studied theology in Lane Theological Seminary in 1869–1872, in Berlin ...

, a noted scholar of the Old Testament, and inherited his name from a line of Puritan ancestors stretching back to the 17th century. He attended

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...

and Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1907, and continued studies at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

and the

University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

. Like his mentor James Harvey Robinson at Columbia, he had a high respect for science and a belief that knowledge of history was a way to improve human prospects for the future. He taught 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 teac ...

as a member of the Department of History from 1923 to 1941. His doctoral dissertation was a critical study of the ''Table Talk'' of Martin Luther and he wrote major biographies of Luther and Erasmus. Smith was a professor at

, Harvard University, and Williams College.

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* * 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers Reformation historians Amherst College alumni Columbia University alumni University of Paris alumni Historians of Europe 1880 births 1941 deaths Cornell University Department of History faculty Amherst College faculty Williams College faculty Harvard University faculty 20th-century American male writers {{US-historian-stub