Billington, James H.

Billington, James H. (Hadley)

(1929– ) historian; born in Bryn Mawr, Pa. Deeply attracted to Russian culture and intellectual life, he earned his Ph.D. on a Rhodes scholarship (1953) and served in the U.S. Army (1953–56) before teaching at Harvard and Princeton. He published three significant books on Russia, including Icon and Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (1966). He was director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1973–87) and then became the 14th Librarian of Congress in 1987.