Beard, Charles Austin (1874-1948)

US historian and a leader of the Progressive movement, active in promoting political and social reform. As a chief exponent of critical economic history, he published An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States 1913 and The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy 1915. With his wife Mary, he wrote A Basic History of the United States 1944, long a standard textbook in the USA.

Beard was born near Knightstown, Indiana, educated at various US universities and in England at Oxford, where he was a founder of Ruskin College. He earned a PhD from Columbia University 1904 and was professor of politics there 1915-17. He resigned from the Columbia faculty 1917 over issues of academic freedom, and helped found the New School for Social Research 1918.