The McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History is a senior

professorship Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

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 ...

. It was

endowed A financial endowment is a legal structure for managing, and in many cases indefinitely perpetuating, a pool of financial, real estate, or other investments for a specific purpose according to the will of its founders and donors. Endowments are of ...

by the will of wealthy merchant

John McLean John McLean (March 11, 1785 – April 4, 1861) was an American jurist and politician who served in the United States Congress, as U.S. Postmaster General, and as a justice of the Ohio and U.S. Supreme Courts. He was often discussed for ...

. The first McLean Professor was

Jared Sparks Jared Sparks (May 10, 1789 – March 14, 1866) was an American historian, educator, and Unitarian minister. He served as President of Harvard College from 1849 to 1853. Biography Born in Willington, Connecticut, Sparks studied in the common s ...

who held the chair between 1838 and 1849; he was later President of Harvard College. The current holder is

Emma Dench Emma Dench (born 1963) is an English ancient historian, classicist, and academic administrator. She has been McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University since 2014, and Dean of its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences ...

, who was appointed in 2015.

List of McLean Professors

(1838 to 1849); first McLean Professor * Henry Warren Torrey (1856 to 1886) * Ephraim Whitman Gurney (1886) * Silas Marcus MacVane (1886 to 1911) *

Edward Channing Edward Perkins Channing (June 15, 1856 – January 7, 1931) was an American historian and an author of a monumental ''History of the United States'' in six volumes, for which he won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for History. His thorough research i ...

(1912 to 1929) * William Scott Ferguson (1929 to 1945) *

Crane Brinton Clarence Crane Brinton (Winsted, Connecticut, 1898 – Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 7, 1968) was an American historian of France, as well as an historian of ideas. His most famous work, ''The Anatomy of Revolution'' (1938) likened the dyna ...

(1946 to 1968) * Franklin L. Ford (1968 to 1990) *

Steven Ozment Steven Edgar Ozment (February 21, 1939 – December 12, 2019) was an American historian of early modern and modern Germany, the European family, and the Protestant Reformation. From 1990 to 2015, he was the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern Hi ...

(1990 to 2015) *

(2015 to present)

References

Ancient and Modern History, McLean Ancient and Modern History, McLean, Harvard Ancient and Modern History, McLean, Harvard {{Harvard-university-stub