Pauline Rubbelke Maier

Pauline Maier, a distinguished historian of the founding of the United States, died on August 12, 2013. She served on the AAS Council from 1983 to 1989. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College in 1960, after which she studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science on a Fulbright scholarship, eventually returning to the United States and earning her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1968. Her scholarly work focused on the establishment of the United States, and the politics and philosophy revolving around the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution. Her many works include textbooks, articles, and scholarly histories that also reached a general audience. Among them are American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997), and Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (2010), covering the year of political debates (or political brawls, as she came to think of them) over the approval of the Constitution. This last earned her the George Washington Book Prize, granted by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Pauline Maier taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for three decades. In keeping with her aim to appeal to general as well as scholarly audiences, she also made many television appearances, including on PBS, the History Channel, and C-SPAN2. She served as president of the Society of American Historians in 2011.