Henry May in His Times by Charles Capper
At the heart of the academic experience is the relationship between students and teachers. We can all point to one or two (or, if we’re lucky, three or four) mentors who not only influenced our professional and intellectual development, but shaped the kind of people we became. In September, Professor Charles Capper wrote a tribute to one such mentor, his graduate school adviser Henry May, who passed away on September 29 at the age of 97. One of his generation’s most distinguished historians, May was Margaret Bryne Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of California Berkeley, where he had taught from 1952 until his retirement in 1980. Capper was one of his last PhD students. Capper’s piece is published in the blog of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History.