Edmund Sears Morgan (January 17, 1916 – July 8, 2013) was an American historian and an eminent authority on early American history. He was the Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, where he taught from 1955 to 1986. He specialized in American colonial history, with some attention to English history. Thomas S. Kidd says he was noted for his incisive writing style, "simply one of the best academic prose stylists America has ever produced." He covered many topics, including Puritanism, political ideas, the American Revolution, slavery, historiography, family life, and numerous notables such as Benjamin Franklin. Life Morgan was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the second child of Edmund Morris Morgan and Elsie Smith Morgan. His mother was from a Yankee family that practiced Christian Science, though she distanced herself from that faith. His father, descended from Welsh coal miners, taught law at the University of Minnesota. His sister was Roberta Mary Morgan (later Wohlstetter), also a historian and, like Edmund, a winner of the Bancroft Prize. In 1925 the family moved from Washington, D.C. to Arlington, Massachusetts to allow the father to take a position as professor at Harvard Law School. Morgan attended Belmont Hill School near home. He then enrolled in Harvard College, intending to study English history and literature, but after taking a course in American literature with F. O. Matthiessen he switched to the new major of American civilization (history and literature), with Perry Miller as his tutor, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1937. Then, at the urging of the jurist Felix Frankfurter (a family friend), Morgan attended lectures at the London School of Economics. Returning to Harvard, in 1942 Morgan earned his Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization, with Miller as his adviser. Although a pacifist, Morgan became convinced after the fall of France in 1940 that only military force could stop Hitler, and he withdrew his application for conscientious objector status. During World War II he trained as a machinist at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, where he turned out parts for radar installations. In 1946–55 Morgan taught history at Brown University before becoming a professor at Yale University, where he directed some 60 PhD dissertations in colonial history before retiring in 1986. In 1939 he married Helen Theresa Mayer, who died in 1982. Morgan died in New Haven on July 8, 2013 at the age of 97. His cause of death was pneumonia.