Michael Gedaliah Kammen

Michael Kammen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar of American history and culture, died on November 29, 2013. He received his undergraduate degree from George Washington University in 1958 and his graduate degrees from Harvard University, earning his Ph.D. in 1964. Michael joined the faculty of Cornell University in 1965 as an assistant professor of history. Over the course of his almost fifty years there, he published over three dozen books about a myriad of American historical subjects ranging from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, winning the 1973 Pulitzer Prize in History for People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization (1972). His 1991 book, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture, was a foundational text in the development of the field of memory studies. He was also an elected member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past president (1995-96) of the Organization of American Historians. Michael retired in 2008, remaining the Newton C. Farr professor of American history and culture emeritus, and had returned to teaching in fall 2013.