The McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History is a senior

professorship Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a 'person who professes'. Professors ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. It was

endowed A financial endowment is a legal structure for managing, and in many cases indefinitely perpetuating, a pool of financial, real estate, or other investments for a specific purpose according to the will of its founders and donors. Endowments are ...

by the will of wealthy merchant

John McLean John McLean (March 11, 1785 – April 4, 1861) was an American jurist and politician who served in the United States Congress, as U.S. Postmaster General, and as a justice of the Ohio and United States Supreme Courts. He was often discu ...

. The first McLean Professor was

Jared Sparks Jared Sparks (May 10, 1789 – March 14, 1866) was an American historian, educator, and Unitarian minister. He served as President of Harvard College from 1849 to 1853. Biography Born in Willington, Connecticut, Sparks studied in the common s ...

who held the chair between 1838 and 1849; he was later President of Harvard College. The current holder is

Emma Dench Emma Dench (born 1963) is an English ancient historian, classicist, and academic administrator. She has been McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University since 2014, and Dean of its Graduate School of Arts and Science ...

, who was appointed in 2015.

List of McLean Professors

(1838–1849); first McLean Professor * Henry Warren Torrey (1856–1886) * Ephraim Whitman Gurney (1886) * Silas Marcus MacVane (1886–1911) *

Edward Channing Edward Perkins Channing (June 15, 1856 – January 7, 1931) was an American historian and an author of a monumental ''History of the United States'' in six volumes, for which he won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for History. His thorough research ...

(1912–1929) *

William Scott Ferguson William Scott Ferguson (November 11, 1875 – April 28, 1954) was a Canadian-American classical scholar. Biography William Scott Ferguson was born in Marshfield, Prince Edward Island on November 11, 1875, the son of Senator Donald Ferguson. ...

(1929–1945) *

Crane Brinton Clarence Crane Brinton (February 25, 1898 – September 7, 1968) was an American historian of France, as well as a historian of ideas. His most famous work, '' The Anatomy of Revolution'' (1938) likened the dynamics of revolutionary movements to ...

(1946–1968) * Franklin L. Ford (1968–1990) *

Steven Ozment Steven Edgar Ozment (February 21, 1939 – December 12, 2019) was an American historian of early modern and modern Germany, the European family, and the Protestant Reformation. From 1990 to 2015, he was the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern Hi ...

(1990–2015) *

(2015–present)

References

Ancient and Modern History, McLean Ancient and Modern History, McLean, Harvard Ancient and Modern History, McLean, Harvard {{Harvard-university-stub