Ronald H. Spector

Ronald Harvey Spector (January 17, 1943 – March 26, 2026) was an American military historian. He was a professor at George Washington University.

Early life and education Spector was born in Pittsburgh on January 17, 1943. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. In 1967 he gained a Ph.D. from Yale University in the same subject. He was also a contributing writer for the Encyclopædia Britannica.

He joined the State Department's Historical Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation in the late 1980s as a representative of the American Historical Association. At the 1989 meeting, Spector and other members discussed expediting the publication of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series and improving the process of classifying and declassifying documents. He advocated reprinting and distributing the 20 backlogged volumes of FRUS to depository libraries, and suggested lobbying Congress for funding for this purpose. Spector also expressed his views on the need to maintain a complete historical record.

Personal life Spector married his wife Dianne Frank in 1970. They has two sons, and four grandchildren. Spector died at his home in Annandale, Virginia, on March 26, 2026, at the age of 83, from cancer.

Accolades In 2012, Spector was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize, for his breadth of contributions to the field of military history. His book Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan was the 1986 winner of the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Prize in Naval History.

The Oxford Companion to American Military History

Samuel Eliot Morison Prize —