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Garrett Mattingly
Garrett Mattingly (May 6, 1900 - December 18, 1962) was a professor of European history at Columbia University who specialized in early modern diplomatic history. In 1960 he won a ...view moreGarrett Mattingly (May 6, 1900 - December 18, 1962) was a professor of European history at Columbia University who specialized in early modern diplomatic history. In 1960 he won a Pulitzer Prize for a bestseller about the Spanish Armada, The Armada (1959).
He was born in Washington, D.C., in 1900 and attended elementary school in Washington and public high school in Michigan after his family moved to Kalamazoo in 1913. Following graduation, he served as a sergeant in the U. S. Army from 1918-1919. He then earned an A. B. summa cum laude at Harvard University (1923) and, while still an undergraduate, studied in France at Strasbourg and Paris and in Florence, Italy. After two years spent working in a New York City publishing house he received his M.A. in history at Harvard (1926) and began his academic career at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, teaching history and literature. He completed his PhD at Harvard in 1935, having developed a strong interest in the sixteenth century.
Aided by a Guggenheim Fellowship, of which he was a four-time winner, he spent the academic year 1937-1938 doing intensive research in European archives. In order to read the primary sources, he taught himself several foreign languages as well as sixteenth-century script.
During World War II he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve as a lieutenant commander, but spent most of his service in Washington, D.C., instructing intelligence officers. In the process, he learned much about naval operations that would later prove useful writing a bestseller about the Armada.
In 1947 he joined the department of history at Columbia University, where he spent the remainder of his career and was appointed William R. Shepherd Professor of European History in 1959.
Mattingly passed away in 1962 at the age of 62.view less