Jack H. Hexter (1910–1996) was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and studied at the University of Cincinnati and at Harvard, where he received a Ph.D. He specialized in Tudor and seventeenth-century British history and was recognized for his essays on historiography. Hexter taught at Washington University in St. Louis and then at Yale, where he became the Charles Stillé Professor and founded the Yale Center for Parliamentary History in 1966. Returning to Washington University, he founded the Center for the History of Freedom and was named John M. Olin Professor. His books include The Reign of King Pym, More's Utopia, Reappraisals in History, The Judaeo-Christian Tradition, Doing History, The Vision of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation, and On Historians.
