Historical Hall of Fame: Rhys Llywelyn Isaac (1937-2010) was a professional historian and Pulitzer prize winning author.
Virginia History Series
Rhys Llywelyn Isaac (20 November 1937 – 6 October 2010 was a South African-born Australian historian, who also worked in the United
States. Isaac and his twin brother Glynn were born in Cape Town, South Africa, Rhys Isaac was the 1959 Cape Province Rhodes
Scholar at Balliol College (Oxford). In 1963 he emigrated to Australia, where he taught at the University of Melbourne and later at
La Trobe University (1971-91). He also was Emeritus Professor of American History at La Trobe University, and a Distinguished Visiting
Professor of Early American History at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
In 1983, Rhys Isaac won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 . He remains the only
Australian historian ever to win a Pulitzer Prize.
In 2005, Isaac published Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution
and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation , which made use of the exemplary diary of a Virginian landholder and member of the House of
Burgesses.