About

William G. Gray is a Professor of History at Purdue University, with a research focus on Modern Germany, International History, and the History of Capitalism. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in December 1999. Professor Gray is the author of 'Germany's Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949-1969' published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2003, and 'Trading Power: West Germany's Rise to Global Influence, 1963-1975' published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. He is also a co-editor of the 'Encyclopedia of the Cold War' (Routledge, 2008) and the 'German Yearbook of Contemporary History, Vol. 6, Secret Services and the International Arms Trade' (2022). Currently, he is pursuing a book-length study of Germany and Brazil during the Cold War, emphasizing themes of capitalism, democracy, and human rights. Professor Gray is accepting graduate students with an interest in Germany and the world.

Research topics

• Political Science
• History
• Humanities
• Sociology
• Law
• Chemistry
• Economics
• Mathematics
• Philosophy
• Biochemistry
• Biology
• Political economy
• Organic chemistry
• Economic history
• Archaeology
• Statistics
• Arithmetic

Selected publications

• Brandt, Willy (1913–92)

  2025-01-23

  reference-entry1st authorCorresponding

  Willy Brandt (1913–92) was a complex and ambivalent figure who emerged as a pivotal chancellor of postwar West Germany. Brandt is most closely associated with the phase of ‘new Ostpolitik’, an improvement in West German relations with the Soviet bloc that coincided with his terms as foreign minister (1966–69) and chancellor (1969–74) during the Cold War and his biography also offers a wide-ranging snapshot of the ever-shifting politics of Central Europe in the twentieth century.

  PublisherDOI

• Hallstein Doctrine

  2025-01-23

  reference-entry1st authorCorresponding

  The policy of non-recognition and non-legitimisation that West Germany enacted against East Germany came to be known as the Hallstein Doctrine. Its purpose was to pressure international states to only recognise the western government as the sole governing body of Germany, at the detriment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It posited that any recognition or the development of diplomatic ties with the GDR would result in immediate severing of relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. The policy was in place from the 1950s to late 1960s by which point it had become impractical. Willy Brandt’s commitment to an era of Ostpolitik ultimately improved west–east relations and paved the way for German reunification after the fall of the Soviet Union.

  PublisherDOI

• Cyprus

  2025-01-23

  reference-entrySenior author

  Cyprus, an island in the Eastern Mediterranean, became an international flashpoint because of longstanding conflicts between the island’s Greek and Turkish-speaking populations. The governments of Greece and Turkey nearly came to blows many times over developments in Cyprus, producing dangerous tensions within the NATO alliance. A deployment of United Nations forces helped to avert war, but the struggle for Cyprus radicalized politics in the Greek peninsula and fostered strong anti-American sentiments there from the 1970s onwards. The 1964 and 1974 flare-ups in Cyprus are seldom defined as Cold War crises, given that the main powers involved were all members of the Western alliance. But a more complex international history of the Cold War demands attention to such intra-alliance struggles. For one thing, the Cyprus case demonstrates the remarkable resilience of NATO structures even in a decade of relative weakness such as the 1970s. It also suggests that the kind of massive military aid that both Greece and Turkey received from larger NATO partners – particularly West Germany – was seldom useful in influencing the recipients’ foreign policies.

  PublisherDOI

• Glycogen phase-separation drives macromolecular rearrangement and asymmetric division in E. coli

  The EMBO Journal · 2025-11-03 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Bacteria often experience nutrient limitation. While the exponential and stationary growth phases have been characterized in the model bacterium Escherichia coli , little is known about what happens inside individual cells during the transition between these two phases. Through quantitative cell imaging, we found that the positions of nucleoids and cell division sites become increasingly asymmetric during the transition phase. These asymmetries were accompanied by an asymmetric reorganization of protein, ribosome, and RNA probes in the cytoplasm. Results from live-cell imaging experiments, complemented with genetic and 13 C whole-cell nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies, show that preferential accumulation of the storage polymer glycogen at the old cell pole leads to the observed rearrangements and asymmetric divisions. Live-cell atomic force microscopy analysis, combined with in vitro biochemical experiments, suggests that these phenotypes are due to the propensity of glycogen to phase-separate into soft condensates in the crowded cytoplasm. Glycogen-associated differences in cell sizes between strains and future daughter cells suggest that glycogen phase-separation allows cells to store large glucose reserves that are not perceived by the cell as cytoplasmic space.

  PublisherDOI

• Guinea

  2025-01-23

  reference-entry1st authorCorresponding

  In the late 1950s, the small West African country Guinea served as one of the first Cold War testing grounds south of the Sahara. Ahmed Sékou Touré, a union leader and political organiser, secured Guinea’s independence from France in 1958 and soon found NATO and Warsaw Pact countries struggling to win his favour. Like several other Third World leaders during this period, Sékou Touré turned this competition to his advantage and used aid from both camps to consolidate a one-party dictatorship.

  PublisherDOI

• Patrick O. Cohrs. <i>The New Atlantic Order: The Transformation of International Politics, 1860–1933</i>.

  The American Historical Review · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Humanities
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• Glycogen phase separation drives macromolecular rearrangement and asymmetric division in <i>Escherichia coli</i>

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2024 · 12 citations

  • Chemistry
  • Biochemistry
  • Mathematics

  C whole-cell nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies, show that preferential accumulation of the storage polymer glycogen at the old cell pole leads to the observed rearrangements and asymmetric divisions. Live-cell atomic force microscopy analysis, combined with in vitro biochemical experiments, suggests that these phenotypes are due to the propensity of glycogen to phase separate into soft condensates in the crowded cytoplasm. Glycogen-associated differences in cell sizes between strains and future daughter cells suggest that glycogen phase separation allows cells to store large glucose reserves without counting them as cytoplasmic space.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Almost Infamous: Amnesty International, the Bonn Republic, and the Brazilian Dictatorship, 1964–85

  Journal of Contemporary History · 2024-12-19

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article examines human rights activism in West Germany on behalf of political prisoners and torture victims in Brazil under the military dictatorship (1964–85). It shows that Amnesty International's model of engagement on behalf of individual prisoners faced significant hurdles, forcing it to rely on support from Bonn's Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, German diplomats interpreted their purview narrowly and construed inquiries on behalf of imprisoned Brazilians as interference in Brazil's national sovereignty. As AI improved the quality of its own information gathering, West German officials came to be more supportive of the organization starting in the mid-1970s – without, however, conceding influence over German policy, which remained dominated by economic considerations. This article highlights the importance of the Brazil case for AI's evolving campaign strategies in the early 1970s as well as the reluctance of both Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt's governments to question the state repression in Brazil.

  PublisherDOI

• Three Cities After Hitler: Redemptive Reconstruction Across Cold War Borders. By Andrew Demshuk. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021. xviii, 566 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. Photographs. Maps. $65.00, hard bound.

  Slavic Review · 2023-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Three Cities After Hitler: Redemptive Reconstruction Across Cold War Borders. By Andrew Demshuk. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021. xviii, 566 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. Photographs. Maps. $65.00, hard bound. - Volume 82 Issue 1

  PublisherDOI

• CHAPTER 21. SWAGGERING HOME

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2023-08-04

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• John Ferris

  Cheltenham General Hospital

  2 shared

• Michael A. Barnhart

  2 shared

• Randall L. Kolar

  University of Oklahoma

  2 shared

• David Harkness

  Barnsley Hospital

  2 shared

• James A. Boutilier

  2 shared

• Cass T. Miller

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  2 shared

• R. J. B. Bosworth

  2 shared

• Charles A. Kupchan

  2 shared