Richard Gable Hovannisian (, born November 9, 1932) is an Armenian American historian and professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is known mainly for his four-volume history of the First Republic of Armenia. Biography Background Hovannisian was born and raised in Tulare, California into a family of Armenian genocide survivors. His father, Gaspar Gavroian, was born in 1901 in the village of Bazmashen (Pazmashen; now Sarıçubuk, Elâzığ), near Kharpert in the Ottoman Empire. Fleeing the genocide of 1915, he moved to the United States by 1920 and changed his last name from Gavroian to Hovannisian, after his father's name, Hovhannes. In 1926, Kaspar married Siroon (Sarah) Nalbandian, also a child of genocide survivors. Their two sons were born in 1928 (John) and 1930 (Ralph). Richard Gable Hovannisian (named after Clark Gable) was born last on November 9, 1932. Hovannisian married Vartiter Kotcholosian in 1957 at the Holy Trinity Armenian Church of Fresno. They had four children, Raffi, Armen, Ani, and Garo. Raffi later went on to become the first Foreign Minister of Armenia and is currently an opposition politician. Education and career Hovannisian received his B.A. in history (1954) from the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.A. in history (1958) and his Ph.D. (1966) from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was also an associate professor of history at Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles, from 1966 to 1969, having joined UCLA in 1962. A Rankean by training, Hovannisian's scholarly work early on was focused on the history of the First Republic of Armenia (1918–20). His Ph.D. dissertation, originally envisioned to encompass its entire history, was published in 1967 as Armenia on the Road to Independence and would serve as a prologue to the four volumes (1971-1996) that he would eventually publish on the history of the republic. These volumes were generally well-received among scholarly circles. In 1986, Hovannisian was appointed as the first holder of the Armenian Educational Foundation Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History at UCLA. Hovannisian is a Guggenheim Fellow who has received numerous honors for his scholarship, civic activities, and advancement of Armenian Studies. His biographical entries are included in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World among other scholarly and literary reference works. Hovannisian serves on the board of directors of nine scholarly and civic organizations, including the Facing History and Ourselves Foundation; the International Institute