Richard Francis Fenno Jr. (December 12, 1926 – April 21, 2020) was an American political scientist known for his pioneering work on the U.S. Congress and its members.
After the war, he graduated from Amherst College in 1948 and completed a Ph.D. degree in political science under William Yandell Elliott at Harvard University in 1956.
He wrote about Republicans and Democrats and explored rural, urban and African American congressional districts in depth.
[citation needed] Fenno's books Congressmen in Committees (1973) and Home Style: House Members in Their Districts (1978), for which he won the first D. B. Hardeman Prize, established him as a leading scholar of American politics.
Research interviews and oral history notes are also housed at the National Archives and Records Administration's Center for Legislative Activities.