Leonard D. White

Who was Leonard D. White?

Leonard Dupee White was an American historian who specialized in public administration in the United States. His technique was to study administration in the context of grouped U.S. presidential terms. An important founder of the field, White worked at the University of Chicago after service in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

White was born in Acton, Massachusetts to John Sidney White and Bertha H. White. He received his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth in 1914 and his master's from Dartmouth in 1915, after which he taught there for a few years. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1921.

In 1934 he went to Washington to serve on the U.S. Civil Service Commission and Central Statistics Board. He died in Chicago in 1958.

The last of White's four historical books subtitled A Study in Administrative History was The Republican Era: 1869–1901. It was published by Macmillan in 1958, the year of his death, as by White "with the assistance of Jean Schneider". Next year White posthumously and Schneider shared the annual Pulitzer Prize for History.