Hinman, Charlton, 1911-1977

Charlton Joseph Kadio "Kadi" Hinman was born, along with his twin sister Jean, in Fort Collins, Colorado on February 10, 1911 to Ethel Charlton and Claude H. Hinman. He attended the Univeristy of Colorado and received a bachelor's degree from Cornell University. He studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar and earned bachelor's and master's degrees there and taught at the University of Missouri from 1937-1939. In 1941, he earned a doctorate in English as a DuPont research fellow at the University of Virginia. Hinman was one of two research fellows at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1941-42. He returned to the Folger in the 1950s as a Guggenheim fellow and a Bolingen research fellow where he invented the Hinman Collator, an optical machine able to compare different copies of the same text, which he used to study copies of the 1623 edition of William Shakespeare's plays at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Hinman's work in naval intelligence in World War II comparing aerial reconnaissance photographs for evidence of bombing damage influenced the collator's design.

During World War II, Hinman was a commander in naval intelligence and communications in Washington and the South Pacific. As member of the Naval Reserves, he was recalled to active duty during 1950-52. Between World War II and the Korean conflict, he was an assistant professor of English at Johns Hopkins University (1946-1950). He was an English professor at the University of Kansas from 1960 until his retirement in 1975. Hinman’s areas of specialization included Shakespeare and Elizabethan drama as well as analytical bibliography. Among his publications are the "Printing and Proof-reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare" in two volumes, the "Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles", and "The First Folio of Shakespeare." Hinman was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Bibliography Society of London, the Modern Language Association of America, and the Shakespeare Association of America.

Hinman married Jane Seymour van Meter on November 8, 1936 in Charlottesville, Virginia. They had one daughter, Suki Barbara van Meter Hinman (who was the third wife of James McNally), but were later divorced. Hinman married Myra Mahlow Olstead in 1968. He died at the Potomac Valley Nursing Home in Rockville, Maryland after a long illness on March 16, 1977.