William Cronon

William Cronon (born September 11, 1954) is an American environmental historian. He is Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is best known for his books Changes in the Land (1983) about the history of the New England landscape, winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, and Nature's Metropolis (1991) about the history of Chicago and its environs, winner of the Bancroft Prize and Marsh Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History, and also known for his New York Times essay "The Trouble with Wilderness" (1995) and for being targeted with FOIA requests for his university emails after speaking in support of the 2011 Wisconsin protests.

He served as president of the American Society for Environmental History 1989–1993 and of the American Historical Association in 2012, and he has led environmental activism on the boards of the Wilderness Society and the Trust for Public Land.