Sadler, Richard W., 1940-

Thomas G. Alexander (b. 1935) was a professor at Brigham Young University and authored a number of award winning books concerning Latter-day Saint and Utah history.

Thomas G. Alexander was a professor of Utah history and American Environmental history at Brigham Young University from 1964 to 2004. He has served in many positions at the University including Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr. Professor of Western History and director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.

Thomas G. Alexander was born in Logan, Utah on August 8, 1935 to Glen M. and Violet B. Alexander. He married Marilyn Johns of Ogden on August 15, 1959. They are the parents of five children and have six grandchildren.

He attended schools in Ogden, and earned an A. S. from Weber State University (1955), a B. S. (1960) and M. S. (1961) from Utah State University, and a Ph. D. in American History from the University of California at Berkeley (1965). From 1956 to 1958 he served in the West German Mission.

He taught at BYU from 1964 to 2004, where he has the Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr. Professor of Western American History and also the Director of Charles Redd Center for Western Studies. He taught Utah history and American environmental history. He has also taught at Utah State University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Nebraska at Kearney, Southern Illinois University (where he held a National Historical Records Commission Fellowship), and the University of Utah. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of 24 books and monographs, more than 125 scholarly articles, and scores of reviews and scholarly presentations. He has also consulted with a number of national and international organizations and law firms and on a number of television programs on the history of Utah and the Latter-day Saints.

At BYU he has served as chair of the Faculty Advisory Council, and he has received the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award, the highest faculty honor bestowed by the university.

He has won a number of awards for his publications. These include prizes for Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930 and Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet. His book, Utah: The Right Place was commissioned by the State of Utah as the official centennial history, and it is used in a number of institutions as a text for Utah history.

He has served as president of the Pacific Branch of the American Historical Association; the Mormon History Association; the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters; and the Association of Utah Historians; and as chair of the Utah Board of State History and the Utah Humanities Council. He is currently Vice President of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society.

He is a fellow of the Utah State Historical Society and the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. Weber State University awarded him their Emeriti Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.

He has served in a large number of church positions including as a member of four bishoprics (including as a bishop), as a stake high councilman, and as ward and stake executive secretary. In 2004, after his retirement, he served an LDS Church Educational System mission in Berlin, Germany with his wife.

From the guide to the Thomas G. Alexander papers, 1954-2009, (L. Tom Perry Special Collections)