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Donald Harnish Fleming

American historian (1923-2008)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ88501731 ↗
Source-derived summary

Donald Harnish Fleming (August 7, 1923, Hagerstown, Maryland – June 16, 2008, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University. He specialized in American and European intellectual history and the history of science and medicine.

Biography

Fleming graduated from Johns Hopkins University with AB in 1943 and from Harvard University with AM in 1944 and PhD in 1947. From 1947 to 1959 he was a faculty member of Brown University's history department. After spending the academic year 1958–1959 as a professor at Yale University, he joined in 1959 the faculty of Harvard University's history department. He remained a professor there until 1999, when he retired as professor emeritus. He was from 1963 to 1965 the chair of the department and from 1973 to 1980 the director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. He was from 1967 to 1986 the co-editor, with Bernard Bailyn, of the journal Perspectives in American History, an annual volume of monographic essays.

Fleming was a lifelong bachelor. His cremated remains were buried at Harvard Hill in Mt.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Donald Harnish Fleming” as american historian (1923-2008). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1923, 2008, 1943, 1944—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1923-08-07. The account is most persuasive where Donald, Harnish and Fleming can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american historian (1923-2008). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q88501731. VIAF identifies the subject as 6398294. The Library of Congress control number is n85800927. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 2008, 1943 and 1944.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Donald Harnish Fleming”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Donald Harnish Fleming primary sources, Donald Harnish Fleming archive and Donald research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Donald Harnish Fleming”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Donald Harnish Fleming” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.