Abstract

William E. Henthorn (1928–1993) served in the U.S. Air Force in Korea and later earned a Ph.D. from Leiden University for his study “Korea: The Mongol Invasions” (1963). He subsequently taught at Indiana University and then became the first scholar to be appointed in the field of Korean studies at Princeton University. He later joined the University of Hawaii, where he became a founding member of the Center for Korean Studies. He also helped found the Korean studies committees for the Social Science Research Council and the Association for Asian Studies.

Despite finding no permanent academic position in Hawaii, he remained in Honolulu as an independent scholar and businessman until his death in 1993. Among his enduring contributions is A History of Korea (1971), the first original, one-volume general history of Korea published in English in more than fifty years. The William E. Henthorn Collection consists of documents from Henthorn’s research files given to the Center for Korean Studies by Prof. Forrest R. Pitts January 18, 1987.