Richard Roy Beeman

Richard Beeman died on September 5, 2016. On the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania for forty-three years, Beeman chaired the History Department, served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and was named the university’s John Welsh Centennial Professor of History. He was a renowned constitutional historian and a beloved instructor who wrote eight books and dozens of articles on U.S. political and constitutional history. He was awarded the George Washington Book Prize for Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (2009). He was a trustee of the National Constitution Center and helped transform the Constitution Center into America’s leading convening space for constitutional education. He was very proud of the work he did as a mentor to primary- and secondary-school history teachers.