Featured Memoir
William D. Labov by Miriam Meyerhoff
“There is social pressure after someone dies to elevate and rewrite everyday lives as heroism and in superlatives. It is not hyperbolic revisionism to record that William Labov (known universally as Bill) created, and then systematized, an entirely innovative approach to linguistics. For Labov, linguistics was about history and community—what we knowingly and unknowingly carry with us, and what we knowingly and unknowingly pass on.”
About the Series
Published since 1877, Biographical Memoirs provide the life histories and selected bibliographies of deceased National Academy of Sciences members. Colleagues familiar with the subject’s work write these memoirs and as such, the series provides a biographical history of science in America.
The Online Collection includes approximately 1,900 memoirs, including those of famed naturalist Louis Agassiz; Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Thomas Edison; Alexander Graham Bell; noted anthropologist Margaret Mead; and psychologist and philosopher John Dewey.
View the current list of Biographical Memoirs or search for specific memoirs: