The Resume

(November 14, 1861-March 14, 1932)
Born in Portage, Wisconsin
Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin (1890-1910) and Harvard (1910-24)
Wrote 'The Frontier in American History' (1920) and 'The Significance of Sections in American History' (1933)
Known for the Frontier Thesis: 'The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development'

Why he might be annoying:

His Frontier Thesis glossed over the Native Americans living on all that 'free land.'
His ideas were used by imperialists to justify the Spanish-American War and the annexations of Hawaii and the Philippines.
For an influential historian, he published relatively little.
By the 1960s, his Frontier Thesis was viewed as a massive oversimplification at best, just plain wrong at worst.

Why he might not be annoying:

The Frontier Thesis was called 'the single most influential piece of writing in the history of American history.'
By the time of his death, two-thirds of US colleges were teaching American history on Turnerian lines.
He won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for History (1933).
Only one of his three children lived to adulthood.
He probably would not have been too upset about his theories being supplanted, given that he observed, 'Each age writes the history of the past anew, with reference to the conditions uppermost in their own time.'

Credit: C. Fishel

Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

• C. Fishel's Profiles [Series 54]
• Historians
• I Attended Johns Hopkins University
• I Attended University of Wisconsin-Madison
• I Died in 1932 (Ranked: 70)
• I Earned a Doctorate
• I Outlived My Child
• In Town for The World's Fair at the Columbian Exposition [1893-Chicago]
• Modern Library's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century (Ranked: 12)
• Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity
• Profiles 35751-36000 (Ranked: 35789)

Year In Review:

In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
In 2021, Out of 12 Votes: 83.33% Annoying
In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
In 2017, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
In 2016, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
In 2015, Out of 11 Votes: 54.55% Annoying
In 2014, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying