Peter Gay

Peter Gay (1923–2015) was a German-American historian. Born in Berlin in 1923, he emigrated to the United States in 1939 as a Jew fleeing persecution. He taught history at Yale University in New Haven and later directed the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Gay was an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and focused particularly on cultural history and German-Jewish culture. He received the Geschwister Scholl Prize in 1999. His best-known works include “Freud: A Biography for Our Time” and “Modernism: The Lure of Heresy.”