Carl L. (Carl Lotus) Becker

Born in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1873, Carl L. Becker became one of the most important American historians of the early 20th century. He studied at the University of Wisconsin under Frederick Jackson Turner and later taught at several universities, including Cornell, where he spent much of his career.

Becker wrote widely on the American Revolution, political thought, and the meaning of history itself. He is especially remembered for The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas and for his American Historical Association address, later published as Everyman His Own Historian, which explored how people use the past to make sense of the present.

Alongside works on the Revolution and on 18th-century thought, Becker also wrote The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, a book that stayed influential long after his death in 1945. His work is still noted for its clear style, skeptical intelligence, and thoughtful questions about objectivity and historical truth.