Dr. Constance M. Green

Born in Ann Arbor Michigan in 1897, Constance McLaughlin Green lectured in English and history, earning a Ph. D. in history from Yale University in 1937. During World War II, she served as historian for the Army Ordnance Department's Springfield Armory. She wrote a history of the armory and a monograph, The Role of Women as Production Workers in War Plants in the Connecticut Valley, which highlighted the invaluable contributions of female civilian workers to the war effort.

From 1948 to 1951, Mrs. Green served as Chief Historian, Ordnance Historical Branch, Office of Military History in Washington, D. C. She oversaw the initiation of a three-volume history of the Ordnance Department in World War II and co-authored, with Harry C. Thomson and Peter C. Roots, the first volume, Planning Munitions for War, published in 1955. Especially valuable are this volume's introductory chapters, written by Mrs. Green, on the history of the Ordnance Department from its inception to World War II.

From 1951 to 1954, she was historian for the Research and Development Board, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and later wrote a history of the Vanguard satellite program. After 1954, she held positions at American University and Dartmouth College and published extensively. Her book Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology (1956) described that inventor's efforts to produce weapons and devise an interchangeable parts system in the early 19th Century. The first volume of her two-volume history of Washington, D. C., Washington: Village and Capital, 1800-1878, won the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for History. Mrs. Green died in 1975.