Regents appoint historian Cronon as prestigious Vilas Professor

William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography and Environmental Studies, has received one of the UW–Madison’s most prestigious honors.

The UW Board of Regents has approved Cronon’s appointment as a Vilas Professor. Created to advance learning, the professorships are awarded to faculty members whose research is recognized as exceptional nationally and internationally. Cronon, who earned his bachelor’s degree from UW–Madison, has pioneered interdisciplinary research in the study of environmental history. He focuses on past human interactions with the natural world: how people use the ecosystems they inhabit, how they modify the landscapes around them and how their ideas of nature shape the environment.

The author or editor of more than 20 books, Cronon is perhaps best known for “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West” (1991), which examines the city of Chicago’s relationship to the hinterlands during the second half of the 19th century. The book was awarded the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for best literary work of nonfiction and the Bancroft Prize for best work of American history. In addition, it received the George Perkins Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History and the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award from the Forest History Society. It also was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in history.

In addition to his research, Cronon has been instrumental in developing UW–Madison’s learning communities as founder and faculty director of Chadbourne Residential College. He also has served as director of the College of Letters and Science Honors Program. He won a UW–Madison Distinguished Teaching Award in 2000.

Cronon has been a Rhodes scholar, Danforth fellow, Guggenheim fellow and MacArthur fellow. In addition to his B.A. from UW–Madison, he holds an M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale University, and a D.Phil. from Oxford University.