Adams, Herbert Baxter

Related Category: Historians, U.S.: Biographies

1850–1901, American historian, b. Shutesbury, near Amherst, Mass. In 1876, the year he received his doctorate at Heidelberg, he became one of the original faculty of Johns Hopkins Univ. There, in 1880, he began his famous seminar in history, where a large proportion of the next generation of American historians trained. Adams founded the “Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Science,” the first of such series, and brought about the organization in 1884 of the American Historical Association. His historical writings introduced scientific methods of investigation that influenced many historians, including Frederick Jackson Turner. He authored Life and Writings of Jared Sparks (1893) and many articles and influential reports on the study of the social sciences.