Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels
Born	Elaine Hiesey (1943-02-13) February 13, 1943 (age 81) Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Known for	Nag Hammadi manuscripts Early Christianity
Spouses	Heinz Pagels ​ ​ (m. 1969; died 1988)​ Kent Greenawalt ​ ​ (m. 1995; div. 2005)​
Awards	MacArthur Fellowship (1981) National Book Award (1980) National Book Critics Circle Award (1979) Guggenheim Fellowship (1979) Rockefeller Fellowship (1978) Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities (2012)
Academic background
Alma mater	Stanford University (BA, MA) Harvard University (PhD)
Academic work
Discipline	History of religion
Institutions	Princeton University Barnard College

Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey (born February 13, 1943), is an American historian of religion. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosticism.

Her best-selling book The Gnostic Gospels (1979) examines the divisions in the early Christian church, and the way that women have been viewed throughout Jewish history and Christian history. Modern Library named it as one of the 100 best books of the twentieth century.