Hayden V. White (July 12, 1928 – March 5, 2018) was an American historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973/2014).

While an undergraduate at Wayne State, White studied history under William J. Bossenbrook alongside then-classmate Arthur Danto.

Therefore, Bossenbrook regarded history as a mystery to be constantly pondered and studied rather than a puzzle to be solved.

In his last book, The Practical Past (2014), White paid tribute to the significant effect of Bossenbrook.

[11] Therefore, White contradicts the view that historical writing can be objective or scientific as purely empiric.

White mentions two figures who have enabled people to ask questions about history's objectivity: Marx and Nietzsche.

[17] This view is contrary to historians such as Eduard Fueter [it] George Peabody Gooch, and Benedetto Croce, who tried to distinguish between historiography and philosophies of history.

During 1972, while a professor of history at UCLA and acting as sole plaintiff, White sued Chief of Police Edward M. Davis, alleging the illegal expenditure of public funds in connection with covert intelligence gathering by police at UCLA.