Samuel Morison Awarded $51,000; Prize Given for Work in Am. History

Samuel Eliot Morison '08, professor of History, emeritus, and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, has won a $51,000 award in history. The Prize was given him Thursday by the International Balzan Foundation of Zurich, Switzerland.

The award was announced by Professor Henri I. Marrou, French Historian from the University of Paris. Marrou called Morison the foremost authority on U.S. naval history, and a major contributor to American history from Christopher Columbus to World War II.

Morison, who retired in 1955 after 40 years of Harvard teaching, said that the honor came as a complete surprise. "A newspaper reporter told me yesterday, and I got the telegram today, but that's all I know," he said. "I don't even know exactly what it's for."

Asked what he will do with the award money, the 76-year-old historian answered, "That will be no problem. I've already spent a million dollars in my imagination."

Currently writing a one-volume history of America, Morison did not remember how many other books he had written. "I never counted them," he said. "Anyway, it's quality, not quantity, that matters." A bibliography of his works, however, placed the total at 38. They deal mainly with Harvard, naval, and colonial history.

Besides Pulitzer Prizes for biographies of Columbus and John Paul Jones, Morison has also received the Bancroft Prize and several medals.