Waldo Gifford Leland (1879-1966) received the Pugsley Gold Medal in 1949. He was born in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of Luther Erving Leland and Ellen Gifford who were both public school teachers. After graduating from Newton High School in 1896, Leland went to Brown University where he received a B.A in 1900. Leland enrolled at Harvard,earning his M.S in history in 1901.While in later life he would be addressed as Dr.Leland all his doctrates were honorary. In 1903, Harvard professor Albert Bushnell AHrt offered Leland, then a teaching assistant, the opportunity to assist Claude H. Van Tyne in a survey sponsored by the newly founded Carnegic Institution of Washington.
After completing the Guide, Leland's next assignment from the Carnegie Institution was to travel to repositories throughout the eastern United States to collect letters of Continental Congress delegates. He then began work on his multivolume Guide to Materials for American History in the /libraries and Archives of the Paris. In 1923, the International Congress of Historical Sciences (ICHS) appointed a committee that under Leland's guidance, led to the formation in 1926 of the International Committee of Historical Sciences. In 1919. Leland acted as organizing secretary for ameeting of representatives from leading American scholarly societies in the social sciences and the humanities that led to the formation of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), a step taken to create an American organization eligible for membership in the newly reorganized UAI. After his retirement Leland became chairman of the Advisory Board of the National Park Service in 1935 and remained in that position until 1950's.