Carl Lotus Becker (1873-1945) was an American historian. He was born in Waterloo, Black Hawk County, Iowa. He studied at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Frederick Jackson Turner was his doctoral advisor there. Becker got his Ph. D. in 1907. He is best known for The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth- Century Philosophers (1932), four lectures on The Enlightenment delivered at Yale University. His assertion-that philosophies in the "Age of Reason" relied far more upon Christian assumptions than they cared to admit-has been influential, but has also been much attacked. Cornell has recognized his work as an educator by naming one of its five new residential colleges the Carl Becker House. His other works include: The Beginnings of the American People (1915), The Eve of the Revolution (1918) and The Declaration of Independence (1922).