Early life and education
Boyd was born in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania,on March 27,1936,to parents Earl and Ellen Boyd (née Crawford). He enlisted in the U.S. Navy shortly after graduating from high school in southern Indiana. He served from 1954 to 1958 mostly aboard the submarine USS Pickerel (SS-524) in the Pacific Ocean. [4] During his naval service he was awarded the American Spirit Honor Medal and the dolphin insignia pin when he became “Qualified in Submarines”in July 1955. [5] [6] [7]
Following his honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy as a First Class Petty Officer (E-6) in 1958,Boyd enrolled as a freshman at Indiana University,Bloomington,where he earned degrees in history,a B.A. in 1962 and an M.A. in 1963. He then had a one-year appointment teaching history at Henderson State College in Arkansas,after which he became a graduate student and Teaching Assistant at the University of Mississippi,Oxford;more significantly,Boyd was a Civil Rights activist on the Ole Miss campus,1964–1965. He later completed study under Peter Paret for his Ph.D. in history at the University of California,Davis,in 1971. [8]
Academic and research career
In 1975 Boyd joined the faculty at Old Dominion University,where he helped establish a graduate program in military history. He was an assistant professor at that time and became full professor by 1985. In 1994 he was named university Eminent Scholar and Louis I. Jaffé Professor of History the next year. [9] [10] [11] [12]
From 1987 until retirement in 2001,he held several research sabbaticals,grants,or appointments outside Old Dominion University. From 1987 to 1989,Boyd was a Visiting Scholar at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington,D.C. In 1990,he was awarded an American Philosophical Society Research Grant,and in 1993 Boyd was appointed Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,New Jersey. During the summers of 1995 and 1996,Boyd was a Visiting Professor at University of Kitakyūshū in Japan,and in 1996–1997,he was Scholar-in-Residence at the National Security Agency (NSA),Fort Meade,Maryland. In 1995–1996,Boyd served as historical consultant and guest curator at The Mariners’Museum in Newport News,Virginia,for the exhibition Carriers,Codes,and Silent Ships:World War II and the New Navy. He was honored as a Huntington Fellow of the museum. Shortly before retiring from Old Dominion University,Boyd was a Fulbright Professor at Adam Michkiewicz University in Poznań,Poland,from 1999 to 2000. [13] [14] [15]
Boyd is known for his work in cryptologic intelligence history of the Second World War. His research also focused on military and diplomatic dimensions of the Second World War,particularly German-Japanese relations and submarine warfare in the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. He described his approach as a comprehensive view of the study of war that frequently includes dimensions of social,economic,and political history. [16] [17]
Between 1974 and 2001,he delivered over 46 papers at national and international conferences on diplomatic,military,and cryptologic history. He has published scholarly articles in academic journals,including Intelligence and National Security ,The Journal of Military History,Journal of the Royal United Service Institution,(UK), United States Naval Institute Proceedings,Modern Asian Studies,Warship International,Journal of Asian History,Military Review, and Cryptologia . [18] [19] [20] [21]
Boyd published Hitler’s Japanese Confidant:General Ōshima Hiroshi and MAGIC Intelligence,1941-1945,a study based on declassified U.S. cryptologic intelligence intercepts,which explored German-Japanese diplomatic and military relations during the Second World War. [22] [23] In 1995,he authored The Japanese Submarine Force and World War II with Akihiko Yoshida. This study is based on declassified American wartime intercepts of secret Japanese radio messages and rarely cited Japanese wartime records from the Defense Ministry,Defense Research Institute,War History Branch in Tokyo. [24] [25] [26]
In 2020,he published an autobiography titled Reminiscences:From Submariner to Academic,in The Silent Service Remembers,Volume 1,an anthology of personal accounts by U.S. Navy submarine veterans. Boyd's papers and research documents,c. 33 linear feet and c. 2,000 rare books from his personal library,were donated to the MacArthur Memorial Archives and Library in Norfolk,Virginia. They form Record Group 150. [27]
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