BRUNSWICK – Paul Luther Nyhus, 70, former Bowdoin College dean of students and dean of the college, and Frank Andrew Munsey professor of history emeritus, died at his home in Brunswick, on Aug. 17. Since November, with courage and grace, he had lived with the diagnosis of brain cancer, and to the end, with quiet determination, preserved thought and wit, kindness and courtesy.

He was born in Williston, N.D., on Aug. 6, 1935, the son of Horace Einar Nyhus, a pastor in the Lutheran Free Church, and Ida Josephine Vigoren Nyhus. He spent his childhood in Fortuna, N.D., Menominee, Mich., and Cumberland, Wis. He attended Oak Grove Lutheran High School in Fargo and graduated summa cum laude from Augsburg College in Minneapolis in 1957 as a philosophy major.

The following year he studied philosophy and history at the University of Heidelberg on a Fulbright Scholarship. He received his bachelor of sacred theology degree from Harvard Divinity School in l961, and his Ph.D. in history in 1967 from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, with research focus on the history, literature, religious thought, and culture of medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation Europe.

In March of 1965, as a graduate student at Harvard, Nyhus responded to the invitation issued nationwide by Martin Luther King to join a second march to Montgomery, an experience that underlay his life’s commitment to civil liberties and racial equality.

At Harvard, Professor Nyhus held a teaching fellowship; the remainder of his career was spent at Bowdoin College, where beginning in 1966, he taught courses on the history of western Europe from introductory survey to focused seminar, and from ancient Greece through the Renaissance. He was successively instructor, assistant professor, associate professor and professor in the Department of History, of which, from 1985 to 1988, he was chair. In 1991, he was named the Frank Andrew Munsey professor of history in recognition of the breadth and depth of his scholarship and teaching. When he retired in 2004, the College’s Board of Trustees named him Munsey professor of history emeritus.

He was the author of scholarly reviews, articles, and books, including “Reform and Revolution: Franciscans in South Germany 1450 – 1530,” published by the American Philosophical Society. Through his research, he developed deep affection for the Swiss city of Basel and interest in its Reformation history, the topic of his inaugural address as Munsey professor and last published article. In recent years, he had focused on the medieval and renaissance history of Italy and Spain.

Nyhus served Bowdoin as dean of students from 1969 to 1974. As a member of President Roger Howell’s administration, he encouraged and protected diversity among students and faculty, participated in the founding of the Afro-American Society and the establishment of co-education, and dealt with such crises as the student strike of 1970 to protest the bombing of Cambodia. As dean of the college from 1975 to 1980 and again in the fall of 1987, he continued to work on the goals established earlier, and participated in the debates that lead in 1985 to the college’s divestment of investments in companies operating in apartheid South Africa.

Nyhus was a member of the Teamsters union, which he joined as an undergraduate working to pay college tuition, an experience that informed his entire life. His professional memberships included the American Historical Association, the Medieval Academy of America, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Society for Reformation Research. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees at Roxbury Latin School from 1973 to 1977. In 1978, Augsburg College named him as one of its most distinguished graduates.

He is survived by his wife, Katharine Johnson Watson, whom he married in 1983; his daughter, Katharine Ellen Nyhus, and her husband, Christopher Cutroneo, of Manhattan Beach, Calif., his daughter, Karen Ida Nyhus, and her husband, David Mustart, of San Francisco; and his daughter, Kristina Victoria Rotach, and her husband, William, and their sons Carlton and Franklin of Columbus, Ohio; his stepmother, Bernice Nyhus, of Cumberland, Wis.; his brother, Edward Nyhus, and his wife, Winnifred, of Minneapolis, Minn., and their four children, Philip of Waterville, Mark of Los Angeles, Linda and Susan of Minneapolis, and their spouses; four grand-nieces and one grand-nephew; and by his former wife and mother of his daughters, Ellen Crocker, of Bethel.

The family of Paul Nyhus wishes to acknowledge with heartfelt gratitude the assistance of CHANS Homehealthcare and CHANS Hospice Care, and of the team of around-the-clock caregivers whose excellence and compassion gave such comfort.

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