Richard Hovannisian

Richard Hovannisian
Hovannisian during the anti-government protests in Yerevan's Freedom Square in March 2013
Born	(1932-11-09) November 9, 1932 (age 84) Tulare, California, U.S.
Residence	Los Angeles, CA
Nationality	American
Fields	Armenian, Russian, and Near Eastern history
Institutions	UCLA
Alma mater	UC Berkeley UCLA
Doctoral advisor	Raymond H. Fisher
Doctoral students	George Bournoutian, Stephen Astourian, Levon Marashlian, Vahram Shemmassian
Known for	Republic of Armenia (4 vols.)
Spouse	Vartiter Hovannisian (née Kotcholosian)
Website Richard G. Hovannisian UCLA Homepage

Richard Gable Hovannisian (Armenian: Ռիչարդ Հովհաննիսյան, born November 9, 1932) is an Armenian American historian and professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is known mainly for his four-volume history of the First Republic of Armenia.

Hovannisian was born and raised in Tulare, California into a family of Armenian Genocide survivors. His father, Gaspar Gavroian, was born in 1901 in the village of Bazmashen (Pazmashen; now ), near Kharpert in the Ottoman Empire. Fleeing the genocide of 1915, he moved to the United States by 1920 and changed his last name from Gavroian to Hovannisian, after his father's name, Hovhannes. In 1926, Kaspar married Siroon (Sarah) Nalbandian, also a child of the genocide survivors. Their two sons were born in 1928 (John) and 1930 (Ralph). Richard Gable Hovannisian (named after Clark Gable) was born last on November 9, 1932.

Hovannisian married Vartiter Kotcholosian in 1957 at the Holy Trinity Armenian Church of Fresno. They had several children, including Raffi, who later went on to become the first Foreign Minister of Armenia and is currently an opposition politician.

Hovannisian received his B.A. in history (1954) from the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.A. in history (1958) and his Ph.D. (1966) from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was also an associate professor of history at Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles, from 1966 to 1969, having joined UCLA in 1962. Hovannisian's scholarly work early on was focused on the history of the First Republic of Armenia (1918–20). His Ph.D. dissertation, originally envisioned to encompass its entire history, was published in 1967 as Armenia on the Road to Independence and would serve as a prologue to the four volumes (1971-1996) that he would eventually publish on the history of the republic. These volumes were generally well-received among scholarly circles.