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First Name: Trevor

Last Name: Dupuy

Birthplace: NY, USA

Gender: Male

Branch: Army (1784 - present)



Middle Name: N.



Date of Birth: 03 May 1916

Date of Death: 05 June 1995

Rank: Colonel

Years Served:
Trevor N. Dupuy

   
Engagements:
•  World War II (1941 - 1945)

Biography:

Trevor N. Dupuy
Colonel, U.S. Army

Trevor N. Dupuy was born on 3 May 1916 in New York, the son of noted military historian, R. Ernest Dupuy.

Trevor Dupuy very much followed in his father's footsteps. He attended the U.S. Military Academy, graduating in the Class of 1938. During World War II he commanded a U.S. Army Artillery Battalion, a Chinese Artillery Group, and an Artillery Detachment from the British 36th Infantry Division. He was always proud of the fact that he had more combat time in Burma than any other American, and received decorations for service or valor from the U.S., British, and Chinese governments.

After WWII, Dupuy served in the U.S. Department of Defense Operations Division from 1945-47, and as Military Assistant to the Under Secretary of the Army from 1947-48. He was a member of the original Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) staff in Paris under Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Matthew Ridgway from 1950-52.

It is as a military historian and a theorist that Trevor Dupuy made a lasting mark on the world. He is perhaps best known for his massive book The Encyclopedia Of Military History (co-written, like many of his books, with his father R. Ernest Dupuy). Starting from the beginning of history and going up the present day, the book tries to cover all the major (and minor) military conflicts in world history. Usually each entry (arranged chronologically and by region) gives little more than the names of the commanders and (often) very rough estimates for the size of the forces involved in the campaigns. Dupuy was not afraid of expressing an opinion and he classified some of his subjects as Great Captains (such as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Frederick II of Prussia and Napoleon). Like most Western reference works it spends far more time dealing with wars in Europe and the U.S. than the rest of the world, but it does at least try to cover the entire world. The Encyclopedia Of Military History has been revised (and updated) several times, most recently in 1993. It can be found in the reference section of most American libraries.

Harvard University appointed Dupuy as a Professor of Military Science and Tactics, where he helped found the Harvard Defense Studies Program (directed from 1958-71 by Henry Kissinger). He left Harvard in 1956 to become Director of the Program in Military Studies at Ohio State University. After retiring from active military duty in 1958, he served as a visiting professor in the International Relations Program at Rangoon University (now Yangon University) in Burma. From 1960-62 Dupuy worked for the Institute for Defense Analyses, a government-funded think tank.

In 1962 he formed the first of his research companies dedicated to the study and analysis of armed conflict, the Historical Evaluation and Research Organization (HERO), and served as President and Executive Director until 1983. From 1967-83 he was also President of T. N. Dupuy Associates Inc. (TNDA), which became the parent organization for HERO. In 1983, TNDA sold its assets (including HERO) to a new corporation he formed called Data Memory Systems, Inc. (DMSI). He was the president and largest stockholder in DMSI. In 1990, Dupuy resigned from DMSI, sold his stock and reactivated TNDA. In 1992 TNDA was closed out, and he established the non-profit The Dupuy Institute (TDI).

Dupuy's main contribution to military operation analysis is the assessment method Quantified Judgment Method or QJM, where the outcome of a battle is predicted using a fairly complicated multiplicative-additive formula in which various factors relating to the strength and fire power of the fighting parties as well as the circumstances are taken into account. Dupuy and his associates adjusted the parameters of his model by using known statistical facts of several recorded battles.

During his lifetime he wrote, or co-wrote, more than 50 books.

Quotes

"My personal feeling is that if I have done anything worthwhile, it is in military theory and the relationship of the elements of historical experience to theory."

"I was brought up by my father to be both a soldier and a military historian. To him the two were inseparable, and that is the way it has always been for me."

Death and Burial

In May 1995, Trevor N. Dupuy learned that he had terminal pancreatic cancer. Three weeks later, on 5 June, he committed suicide by gunshot at his home in Vienna, VA. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA.

When he died, he had been married 5 times, with his last wife being Zhang Yun. He fathered 9 children - 6 boys and 3 girls.



Honoree ID: 2446   Created by: MHOH

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