Rath, Reuben John, 1910-

Reuben John Rath (1910 - ) held teaching assignments at the University of Arkansas, Mississippi State College for Women, University of Georgia, the University of Colorado and the University of Texas as Professor of History before joining the Rice University faculty in 1963. At Rice University he was Chairman of the Department of History and Political Science from 1963 to 1968 and Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of History from 1969 to 1979. Rath was co-founder and former president of the Conference Group for Central European History of the United States and Canada, former president of the Southwestern Social Science Association, and member and board member of numerous national and international historical associations. Rath is author of numerous works, including: The Fall of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy (1814) (1941); The Provisional Austrian Regime in Lombardy-Venetia, 1814-1815 (1969); and The Viennese Revolution of 1848 (1957).

From the guide to the Austrian Revolution Ephemera R. John Rath Collection (MS 307), 1848, (University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. Special Collections Dept.)

R. John Rath, born December 12, 1910, in St. Francis, Kansas, received a Bachelor of Arts in 1932 from the University of Kansas, a Masters of Arts in 1934 from the University of California at Berkeley, and Ph.D. in 1941 from Columbia University. Following army service in 1945, he was named Chief, Division of Documentary Evidence, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, U.S. Zone in Germany, and later, chief of the same division, Austrian mission. He was granted a Social Science Research Council Fellowship in 1937-1938 for research in Austria and Italy and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956-1957 for research in Italy.

Dr. Rath held teaching assignments at the University of Arkansas, Mississippi State College for Women, University of Georgia, the University of Colorado and the University of Texas as Professor of History before joining the Rice University faculty in 1963. At Rice University he was Chairman of the Department of History and Political Science from 1963 to 1968 and Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of History from 1969 to 1979.

Rath was co-founder and former president of the Conference Group for Central European History of the United States and Canada, former president of the Southwestern Social Science Association, and member and board member of numerous national and international historical associations. He wrote numerous books, articles and book reviews on European history. He also founded and edited the Austrian History Yearbook.

From the guide to the Manuscript of Reuben John Rath's, The Provisional Austrian Regime in Lombardy-Venetia, MS 310., 1814-1815, (Woodson Research Center, )

Reuben John Rath was born on December 12, 1910 in St. Francis, Kansas. He earned his B.A. from the University of Kansas, M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. In 1937-1938, he was in Austria conducting research. In March 1938, Rath found himself assisting Austrian nationals flee from the Nazi invasion of Austria. Rath served in the Army during World War II and worked with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Germany and Austria after the war was over.

In 1947, Dr. Rath joined the faculty at the University of Colorado (Boulder). He moved on to the University of Texas at Austin in 1951 and remained there until 1963, when he joined the faculty as professor and chair of the department of history at Rice University. In 1965, Dr. Rath founded the Austrian History Yearbook, which became the preeminent scholarly publication on Austrian history and remains the only English-language journal devoted to the history of Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and parts of Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Romania and Serbia. In 1966, with the assistance of Charles Jelavich, he organized the Conference on Nationality in Central Europe, held at Indiana University. This conference is considered a milestone in the study of Austrian history. He retired from Rice University in 1980 as the Mary Gibbs Jones emeritus professor of history.

In 1980, the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota invited Dr. Rath to join the faculty of the department of history and to continue the publication of the Austrian History Yearbook at Minnesota. For five years, Dr. Rath served as professor of history and worked closely with the Center for Austrian Studies, retiring from the University of Minnesota in 1985 as professor emeritus. R. John Rath died on February 18, 2001.

From the guide to the R. John Rath papers, circa 1930s-2000, (University of Minnesota Libraries. University Archives [uarc])