Professor Jonathan Macauley Nielson is an award-nominated academic historian, writer, teacher, scholar, and author whose specialization is American diplomatic history and foreign relations.  Earning his BA from the University of California, Irvine, MA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks , and Ph D from the University of California, Santa Barbara, his academic career spans over 40 years in higher education. Raised in Whittier in Southern California, Jon lived in Newport Beach before moving to Fairbanks in 1971 to live the Alaska adventure.  Over the next 20 years while teaching at UAF and Tanana Valley Community College, he published several monographs on Alaska Native history and regional cultural resources, as well as state and federal monographs, while writing the first military history of the state in 1984 published as Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier (republished in a new, updated edition in 2018). He also served as Vice President of the Tanana Valley Historical Society. And in numerous other positions.

Returning to Northern California in 1989, he taught at several California State University campuses and community colleges, continuing to write and publish scholarly works and articles, as well as historical and more contemporary novels drawn from actual events.  Teaching and his interactions with students has always been the most rewarding aspects of his professional life, and his mentorship of students remains the most profound gift of service to the academe.