Alan M. Schom is an American-born writer and biographer, born in Sterling, Illinois, in 1937. He attended Beverly Hills High School and received an A.B. in European History from University of California, Berkeley, a Ph.D at Durham University, School of Oriental Studies. He taught French and Modern European History at Southern Connecticut State University and at the University of California, Riverside. He served as the President and Founder of the French Colonial Historical Society, and founded its research journal, French Colonial Studies. He was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution in 1984. 

January 1st, 1937 in United States of America (Age 87)