Ernest Samuels; Pulitzer-Winning Biographer

Ernest Samuels, 92, an educator and author who won the Pulitzer Prize for one of his biographies of Henry Adams. Praised for his painstaking scholarship and his interpretation, Samuels won the Pulitzer in 1965 for the third book in his trilogy on Adams, “Henry Adams: The Major Phase.” His second volume, “Henry Adams: The Middle Years,” published in 1958, won the Parkman and Bancroft awards. The initial book was “The Young Henry Adams,” published in 1948. Adams, the great-grandson and grandson of U.S. presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, respectively, was the principal subject of Samuels’ lifelong research. A native of Chicago who earned a law degree at the University of Chicago, Samuels practiced law for a few years but later earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in English and taught at Northwestern University from 1942 until 1971. He also wrote a biography of art connoisseur Bernard Berenson, who owned a collection of Adams’ letters. On Monday in Evanston, Ill.