Alfred Gollin


Alfred Gollin was an American scholar of European history.

Early life and education

Born in New York City to immigrant parents, Gollin enlisted in the US Army in 1943. He served in the field artillery in the European theater. After the war ended in Europe, Gollin was selected to attend New College, Oxford for a term as part of a program to send outstanding American soldiers to English universities. He returned to the USA and earned his B.S. at City College of New York. William L. Langer and Sir John Myers encouraged him to return to Oxford for his B.A. He received the Cromwell Medal and the New College Essay Prize and earned his B.A. in 1951. He was appointed to an Extraordinary Lectureship in History at Oxford University and also served as official historian for The Observer for seven years. His D.Phil. thesis at Oxford was entitled "History of The Observer, 1905-1910".

Career

Gollin taught from 1959-1961 at the University of California, Los Angeles, and then returned to conduct further research in Great Britain. He was called to the growing History Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1966 where he joined Leonard Marsak, C. Warren Hollister, and Joachim Remak in building a strong European history program.
Gollin was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Oxford University in 1968. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Literature. He was a dynamic and enthralling classroom lecturer who started each term’s lecture with “Let me begin my story,” then continued each subsequent lecture with “Let me continue my story,” and prefaced the term’s last lecture with “Let me end my story.” He also had an array of jokes throughout each class such as his “three rules of history”. He earned teaching accolades such as “Professor of the Year” at UCLA in 1960 and the Distinguished Teaching Award at UCSB in 1991.

Selected publications