He is best known for his work in researching the authorship of disputed numbers of The Federalist Papers, and his influential studies in the history and influence of republicanism in the United States during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—the era of the Enlightenment.
Douglass Greybill Adair was born in 1912 in New York City, but grew up with his family in Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama.
Adair insisted that historical actors such as James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton were guided by their education and creative interaction with ideas derived from the evolving Atlantic intellectual tradition.
These ideas—particularly the cluster of ideas, assumptions, habits of thought, and interpretative principles known as republicanism—played a crucial role in the early development of the United States.
For an array of reasons, including depression associated with his inability to produce a full-length scholarly monograph in his field, Adair committed suicide in 1968.