Fields American History | Name Frederick Merk Institutions Harvard University | |
Alma mater University of Wisconsin Doctoral students John Morton Blum, Paul Wallace Gates, Rodman W. Paul, Ralph Hidy, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Samuel Hays, Bradford Perkins, Elting E. Morison Died 1977, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Education University of Wisconsin-Madison, Harvard University Books Manifest Destiny and Missi, The Oregon question, Albert Gallatin and the O, Fruits of propaganda in the Tyl, History of the westward Similar People George Simpson, Frederick Jackson Turner, Samuel Eliot Morison, Reuben Gold Thwaites, Frank Freidel | ||
Doctoral advisor Frederick Jackson Turner Residence United States of America | ||
Frederick Merk (August 15, 1887 – September 24, 1977) was an American historian. He taught at Harvard University from 1924 to 1956.
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Biography
Frederick Merk was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1887. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1911 and then worked for five years at the Wisconsin State Historical Society. In 1916 he went to Harvard University to study under the direction of Frederick Jackson Turner. Upon Turner's retirement in 1924, Merk took up his position with Turner's support. He taught at Harvard until 1956, and oversaw several dozen graduate students.
Scholarly impact
John Morton Blum, one of Merk's graduate students after World War II, recalled of his mentor that Merk emphasized integrity, "an integrity of mind and process, of the way in which to understand and to write history, an integrity by his standards so severe that perhaps no one of his students could ever achieve it, but a quality he made so important that all of them would try."