Peter Gay

Peter Gay (born Peter Joachim Fröhlich; June 20, 1923 - May 12, 2015) was the Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers (1997-2003). Gay received the American Historical Association's (AHA) Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2004. He is the author of more than twenty-five books, including The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (1968), and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988). In 1967 he was awarded the History and Biography National Book Award for The Enlightenment, Vol. I: The Rise of Modern Paganism. Peter Gay was born in Berlin, Germany in 1923 and immigrated to the United States in 1941. From 1948 to 1955 he was a political science professor at Columbia University, and then a history professor from 1955 to 1969. He left Columbia in 1969 to join Yale University¿s History Department as Professor of Comparative and Intellectual European History, and was named Sterling Professor of History in 1984. Peter Gay died at home in Manhattan on May 12, 2015, at the age of 91.