William Appleman Williams (June 12, 1921 – March 5, 1990) was one of the 20th century's most prominent revisionist historians of American diplomacy. He achieved the height of his influence while on the faculty of the department of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is considered to be the foremost member of the "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic history. Early life and education Williams was born and raised in the small town of Atlantic, Iowa. He attended Kemper Military School in Boonville, Missouri, then earned a degree in engineering at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. He graduated and was commissioned an ensign in 1945. After serving in the South Pacific as an executive officer aboard a Landing Ship Medium, he was stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he made plans to become an aviator like his father. His father had been in the Army Air Corps until he died in a plane crash in 1929. A wartime back injury caused enormous pain and ended his chances at becoming a naval aviator after the war. He requested a medical discharge from the navy in 1946 and moved to University of Wisconsin–Madison to begin graduate studies in 1947. He earned a master's degree and a PhD there and came under the influence of the Beardian historians, especially Fred Harvey Harrington, Merle Curti, and Howard K. Beale. After teaching at various other colleges, he returned to Madison in 1957 to teach in the history department. Career Williams completed his M.S. in 1948 and his Ph.D. in 1950. Subsequent additional research led to his first book, an expansion and revision of his doctoral thesis, published as American-Russian Relations, 1781-1947 (1952). In the meantime, Williams pursued a series of appointments. His first, to Washington and Jefferson College, came in 1950. The following academic year (1951–52) Williams taught at Ohio State University, but (according to Williams) he had a faculty dispute with Woody Hayes (in his first year as football coach and, like Williams, a former naval officer) over low grades for a football player that Williams would not change, the incident apparently leading to his needing to find another appointment. In the fall of 1952, Williams took up a tenure-track appointment to the University of Oregon where he would remain for five years (with a year in Madison, Wisconsin, again on a Ford Fellowship from 1955 to 1956). When Fred Harvey Harrington became