Robert Paxton - Biography

Biography

Paxton was born in Lexington, Virginia. He received a B.A. from Washington and Lee University, an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Paxton taught at the University of California, Berkeley and the State University of New York at Stony Brook before joining the faculty of Columbia University in New York, where he is now Mellon Professor Emeritus of Social Science in the Department of History.

Paxton was called to testify at the trial of Maurice Papon (1910–2007), who was convicted for crimes against humanity in 1998.

In April, 2009, the French government awarded Paxton the Legion d'honneur.

Read more about this topic:  Robert Paxton

Famous quotes containing the word biography:

    There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

    A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.
    André Maurois (1885–1967)

    As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)