 In 1949, the three of them were co-recipients of the Mary Soper Pope Memorial Award in botany.He was the father of Elaine Pagels, Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University and a scholar of Early Christianity.His last book, "Interspecific Hybrid Derivatives Between Facultatively Apomictic Species of Bluegrasses & Their Responses to Contrasting Environments", was published in 1982.