Bernard Bailyn's Eulogy for Pauline Maier (1938–2013) October 29, 2013

Abstract

E NOTE: At the memorial service for Pauline Maier, William Kenan Jr. Professor of History at MIT, Bernard Bailyn’s eulogy for his former graduate student revealed his engagement as an adviser while displaying his keen appreciation of Pauline Maier’s intellectual temperament. Maier, who had once served as Bailyn’s “grader,” went on to become one of the foremost scholars of Revolutionary America. Her first book, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765– 1776 (1972), grew out of her dissertation. The studies that followed—The Old Revolutionaries: Political Lives in the Age of Samuel Adams (1980), American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997), and Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution (2010)—won critical acclaim and prestigious awards for Maier’s fresh research and literary craftsmanship. She was the first professor of early American history at the University of Massachusetts Boston and taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before going to MIT in 1978. Always a dedicated teacher, Maier also wrote American history textbooks for college and middle school students.