Gordon S. Wood, whose books about the birth of the United States made him one of the country’s most respected historians, died at 92 after being hit by a car in East Providence, Rhode Island, the New York Times reports.

Wood was born and raised in Massachusetts, and educated at Tufts University and Harvard University. He taught at Harvard, the University of Michigan, the College of William and Mary, and Brown University.

He published his first book, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787, in 1969; it was a finalist for a National Book Award. Several other books followed, including The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991), which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2004); The Idea of America (2011); and Power and Liberty (2021). He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2011 by President Barack Obama.

Wood had an unexpected pop culture shoutout in 1997, when Matt Damon’s character in the film Good Will Hunting invoked his name while mocking a Harvard student, telling him, “You’re going to be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about, you know, the pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.”

Wood’s admirers paid tribute to him on social media. On the platform X, author C. Bradley Thompson posted, “I'm deeply saddened to learn about the tragic death of my dissertation advisor, Gordon S. Wood. Professor Wood was America's greatest historian of the American Revolution. Even though he was 92, he was still as intellectually active as he was when I met him 40 years ago.”

And filmmaker Ken Burns wrote, “We are devastated by the sudden loss of Gordon Wood. Known to many as one of the foremost scholars on the American Revolution, Gordon was also a teacher of generations of students and other historians who, like him, help us better understand who we are as a country and a people. He will be greatly missed. Our thoughts are with his family, his many friends and all who he touched throughout his remarkable life.” 

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.