Jacobs, Wilbur R.

Biography

Wilbur R. Jacobs was born on June 30, 1918, in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from UCLA in 1940 then received a MA in history with honors from UCLA in 1942. In 1941, he entered the Army Air Forces, and was discharged from the service in late 1945. Jacobs returned to UCLA for a PhD in history in 1947. He was a member of the history department faculty at Stanford University, 1947-1949, during which time he also taught at Indian University, in the summer of 1948. In 1949, Jacobs accepted a teaching position at University of California, Santa Barbara College. He was a founding member of the faculty of the History Department at UCSB and an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of American Indian [Native American] history, environmental history, U.S. colonial history, and the West/westward expansion, including examination of the work of Francis Parkman and Frederick Jackson Turner. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Western History Association's Award of Merit. He was also the president of several scholarly organizations: the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association (1977), the American Society for Environmental History (1979-1980), and the American Society for Ethnohistory (1980). The History Department established the Wilbur Jacobs Award for outstanding graduate students in Native American history. Jacobs retired from the faculty at UCSB in 1988. He died on June 15, 1998, in Pasadena, California.

For more information, see the Office of Public Information Biographical Files (UArch 11).