Samuel Williston
Document Type
Essay
Publication Title
Harvard Magazine
Publication Date
2006
Volume
January - February 2006 Issue
Abstract
(Excerpt)
When Samuel Williston, A.B. 1882, LL.B.-A.M. ’88, died at the age of 101, Time magazine took notice, describing his enormous influence on twentieth-century American law in an obituary titled “A Yankee Socrates.” Williston had drafted several important commercial statutes and had written systematic works on sales and contract law; today, more than 80 years after its publication, the contracts treatise still lands him on lists of the most widely cited legal scholars. Time also discussed Williston’s decades-long career at Harvard Law School and the affection that colleagues and former students had for the man: a gentle, good-humored teacher who charmed his classes with hypothetical cases involving his horse, Dobbin, and who regularly invited students to dine with his family on Sundays.
Yet Time omitted one of the most salient features of Williston’s long life. In his mid thirties, he suffered a nervous breakdown that caused him to stop work for years at a time. Diagnosed with “neurasthenia,” he took extended leaves of absence, attending different sanitariums in search of a cure. Eventually, with the help of what we would today recognize as a combination of drug and cognitive therapy, he worked his way to a kind of recovery that allowed him to pursue his enormously productive career.
Comments
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