Harold Melvin Hyman (July 24, 1924 – August 6, 2023) was an American historian of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era and the William P. Hobby Professor of History at Rice University. During World War II, Hyman served in the Marines in the South Pacific and there earned his high school diploma. Hyman received a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (1948) and an M.A. (1950) and Ph.D. (1952) from Columbia University.

Teaching

Hyman was an instructor in modern history at City College (1950–1952); assistant professor of history, Earlham College, 1952–1955; visiting assistant professor of American history, UCLA 1955–1956; associate professor of American history, Arizona State University, 1956–1957; professor of history, UCLA 1963–1968; William P. Hobby Professor of History, Rice University, 1968–2003.

Personal life and death

In 1946, Hyman married Ferne Handelsman, later chief reference librarian at Rice. The couple celebrated 65 years of marriage before her death in 2011. Harold Hyman died on August 6, 2023, at the age of 99.

Honors and awards

Hyman was a Ford Foundation Fellow, a Senior Fulbright Lecturer, an Organization of American Historians Lecturer, and a judge for the Pulitzer Prize and the Littleton-Griswold prize of the American Historical Association. His Era of the Oath: Northern Loyalty Tests during the Civil War and Reconstruction (1954) won the American Historical Association's Beveridge Award.

Selected works

Hyman was editor, contributor, or joint author:

Evaluations

Bodenhamer (2012) says, "The best guide to the constitutional changes brought by the Civil War and Reconstruction is Harold Hyman, A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution (1973). Mayer (2001) says Hyman, "wrote the definitive work on loyalty tests throughout American history."