Bernard Bailyn (born 1922) is an American historian, author, and professor specializing in U.S. Colonial History. He has been a professor at Harvard since 1953, and has won the Pulitzer Prize for History twice (1968 and 1987).

Bailyn was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1922. In 1953 he earned his Ph.D. from Harvard, and has been associated with the University ever since. He was made a full professor in 1961, and professor emeritus in 1993. He is most known for meticulous research and for interpretations that sometimes challenge the conventional wisdom, especially those dealing with the causes and effects of the American Revolution.

His former students include Pulitzer Prize winners Jack N. Rakove and Gordon S. Wood.

Works by Bailyn

• "The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century"; 1955; 1979 paperback reprint, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674612809.
• "Education in the Forming of American Society"; 1960; 1970 reprint, University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 0807807974; (1972 Paperback: ISBN 0393006433).
• "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution";1967 (1968 Pulitzer Prize); 1992 Paperback edition, ISBN 0674443020.
• "The Origins of American Politics"; 1968; 1970 Paperback, Vantage, ISBN 0394708652.
• "The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson"; 1974, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674641604; (Paperback: ISBN 0674641612).
• "The Great Republic"; 1985 (3rd edition); D. C. Heath, ISBN 0669075450; (1992 Paperback: ISBN 0618023666).
• "The Peopling of British North America"; 1986; 1988 paperback, Vintage, ISBN 0394757793.
• "Voyagers to the West"; 1986 (1987 Pulitzer Prize); 1988 Paperback edition, Vintage, ISBN 0394757785.
• "On the Teaching and Writing of History"; 1994, paperback, ISBN 0874517206
• "To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders"; 2003, Knopf, ISBN 0375413774; (Paperback pending).