David Herlihy

David Joseph Herlihy (May 8, 1930 – February 21, 1991) was an American historian who served as the president of the American Historical Association. His parents had eloped in Los Gatos in California. He was a member of his school's debating team and met his wife-to-be Patricia McGahey at a match as a sophomore.

At college, he published his first article in the journal of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia; it was about Peter Yorke and the American Protective Association. He got his bachelor's degree with all As in three years from the University of San Francisco. Herb Caen reported this achievement at the time. He studied Byzantine history at the Catholic University of America. He received his master's degree in 1953. He went on to undertake a fellowship at Yale, where he worked on the Middle Ages in Italy with Robert Lopez, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1956.

Herlihy died at age 60 at his home in Providence, Rhode Island, on February 21, 1991.