Ashley Horace Thorndike in the context of "Lynn Thorndike"

Lynn Thorndike (24 July 1882, in Lynn, Massachusetts, US – 28 December 1965, New York City) was an American historian of medieval science and alchemy. He was the son of a clergyman, Edward R. Thorndike, and the younger brother of Ashley Horace Thorndike, an American educator and expert on William Shakespeare, and Edward Lee Thorndike, known for being the father of modern educational psychology.

In A Short History of Civilization (1926), Thorndike was the first historian to propose the term "early modern" to describe what is today recognized as the early modern period, about 1500–1800.