Nicholas J. Spykman

Nicholas John Spykman (13 October 1893 –26 June 1943) was an American political scientist who was one of the founders of the classical realist school in American foreign policy, transmitting Eastern European political thought into the United States. A Sterling Professor of International Relations, teaching as part of the Institute for International Studies at Yale University, one of his prime concerns was making his students geographically literate—geopolitics was impossible without geographic understanding. His work on geopolitics and geostrategy led him to be to known as the "godfather of containment."

Spykman was born on 13 October 1893 in Amsterdam. He attended Delft University and the University of Cairo. He worked as a journalist in various parts of the world during much of the 1910s and also served as a diplomatic assistant for Holland in Egypt and the Dutch East Indies.

He then came to the United States around 1920 to enter a doctoral program at the University of California, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1921, a master's degree in 1922, and a Ph.D. in 1923. The subject of his dissertation, which he subsequently revised for publication, was Georg Simmel. He then was an instructor in political science and sociology there from 1923 to 1925.

He was married to the children's novelist E. C. Spykman. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1928.

In 1925 he came to Yale University, where he was an assistant professor of international relations, becoming a full professor in 1928. He became the chair of the university's department of international relations in 1935. Also in 1935, he was a co-founder of the Yale Institute of International Studies and was its first director. He held this position until 1940, when he became ill and relinquished it.

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