Cornell Professor Emeritus Paul Wallace Gates died Tuesday, Jan. 5, in the Clairmont House, Oakland, Calif., at age 97. He was an authority on the American West and U.S. public land policies and an ardent conservationist who spoke out against using public lands for private gain.

Gates' History of Public Land Law Development, published in 1968, immediately became the acknowledged authority for all historical research on U.S. public lands, according to Lawrence Lee, a colleague from San Jose State University. "Paul Gates' career has a unique quality about it in its exceptional focus on one grand topic, U.S. land history," wrote Lee in 1991. He also praised Gates for devoting his post-retirement years to "saving the natural resources on federal lands from profligate exploitation."

Gates taught at Cornell from 1936 until his retirement in 1971 and held two endowed chairs during his tenure: the Goldwin Smith Professorship of American History and the John Stambaugh Professorship of American History. He also chaired Cornell's history department from 1946 to 1956.

Before coming to Cornell, Gates taught at Harvard, where he also earned his Ph.D. in 1930, and at Bucknell. At Harvard he studied under Frederick Merk, a former student of Frederick Jackson Turner, who is considered one of the great American historians. In a "festschrift," or collection of tributes produced in 1968, Merk lauded Gates for being a stimulating teacher and "a producer of producing scholars." He noted that Gates' 23 Ph.D. students had already gone on to write 21 excellent books.

"In a sense, Gates was a student of Turner's," said Richard Polenberg, Cornell's current Goldwin Smith Professor of American History. He called Gates "a remarkable individual, an inspiration to colleagues who actively pursued his research and writing well into his 90s."

Gates' daughter, Annette Shimer, described her father as a man with a social conscience who was passionate, even stubborn, in his beliefs. He put them into practice through his professional and community involvement, she observed.

He was a historical expert for the justice department on cases involving Native American land claims and a consultant for the Public Land Law Review Commission.

In addition to the seminal book on land law cited by Lee, Gates' principal books include: The Illinois Central Railroad and Its Colonization Work; The Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University; Fifty Million Acres: Conflict over Kansas Land Policy, 1854--1890; The Farmers' Age, Agriculture, 1815--1860; Agriculture and the Civil War; Land and Law in California, Essays on Land Policies; and Jeffersonian Dream, Studies in American History.

Gates is survived by his second wife, Olive Lee of Oakland, Calif.; his four children, Edward W. Gates of Burdett, N.Y., Lillian G. Goodman of Mendocino, Calif., Annette R. Shimer of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Rosemary G. Campos of Berkeley, Calif.; 12 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. His first wife, Lillian Francis Cowdell Gates, and a granddaughter, Lillian A. Burke, a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, predeceased him.

Contributions, in lieu of flowers, may be sent to the Paul W. Gates Endowment Fund for American History, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853.