Brigham Young University faculty

Robert E. Riggs (1927–2014) held the Guy Anderson chair of law in the J. Reuben Clark Law School of Brigham Young University (BYU).
Riggs was born in Mesa, Arizona and raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was a participating member of that Church throughout his life.
Riggs graduated from Mesa Union High School in 1945. Later that year he was drafted into the United States military as World War II was about to conclude. He was stationed for a time in Korea, after the end of World War II and before the Korean War began. He then served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the British Isles. For the second year of his two year mission he was the editor of the Millennial Star. In September 1949 Riggs married Hazel Dawn MacDonald in the Mesa Arizona Temple. They had seven children.
Riggs received a bachelors and master's degree in political science from the University of Arizona. He then earned a PhD in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign while also spending a year at the University of Oxford on a Rotary Foundation Fellowship.
From 1955 to 1960 Riggs was a professor of political science at BYU. During this time he took a year leave and served as a Rockefeller Research Fellow in International Organization at Columbia University. From 1960 to 1963 Riggs was a reaerch associate at the University of Arizona while also earning a law degree there. He was then a lawyer in private practice in Arizona very briefly. He then went to Minnesota where he was a professor in the political science department at the University of Minnesota from 1964 to 1975. He served as mayor of Golden Valley, Minnesota for two terms. He also ran as a Democrat in the Minnesota 3rd Congressional District in 1974, which election he lost.
In 1975 Riggs joined the faculty of the BYU Law School, where he remained until 1992. From 1993 to 1994 he and his wife served as missionaries for the Church at the Mesa Arizona Temple Visitors Center.

Keith W. Perkins was a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University (BYU). He has written widely on the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in the period when it was headquartered at Kirtland, Ohio. Perkins has written articles on figures in the recording of the history of the LDS Church, such as Andrew Jenson, whose work as a historian was the subject of Perkins' masters' thesis. His thesis was cited in Charles T. Morrissey's article "We Call it Oral History", which moved the accepted time of the origin of the term back from the late-1940s to the mid-1860s.Perkins was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He has a BA in History Education from Arizona State University and an MA and PhD from BYU in Church History and Doctrine. He was seminary principal at the LDS seminary adjacent to Granite High School in Salt Lake County, Utah, and then instructor at the Tempe Institute of Religion (adjacent to the campus of Arizona State University) before joining the BYU faculty in 1975. During the mid-1980s, as chair of the department of Church History and Doctrine, Perkins developed the idea for special symposium to be held in various locations related to church history. This was the beginning of the various publications in the LDS Church History in place x series, with New England, New York and Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, the Pacific, and the United Kingdom having been some of the places featured over the years in the series. He has also written articles on subjects such as the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible.Among other works, Perkins compiled with Milton V. Backman Jr. Journals, Diaries, Biographies, Autobiographies and Letters of Some Early Mormons and Others Who Knew Joseph Smith, Jr. and/or His Contemporaries. With LaMar C. Barrett and Donald Q. Cannon, he edited the book Sacred Places: Ohio and Illinois, published by Deseret Book in 2001. Perkins was also a co-author with Bruce A. Van Orden, David J. Whittaker, Truman G. Madsen, John W. Welch and James P. Bell of the book Book of Mormon Scholars. Perkins compiled a book entitled Marriage is Ordained of God, which was a collection of talks on the subject by general authorities of the LDS Church.
Perkins and his wife, Vella Crowther, are the parents of four children. Perkins is a member of the LDS Church and has worked with Ezra Taft Benson, Gordon B. Hinckley and Thomas S. Monson in developing the church's visitors center and other properties and programs in Kirtland, Ohio. Among other callings in the LDS Church, Perkins has served as a bishop and a stake president.

Carl Ferdinand Eyring (August 30, 1889 – January 3, 1951) was an American acoustical physicist. He was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Brigham Young University (BYU) for 26 years and was also the vice president of the Acoustical Society of America from 1950 until his death in 1951.

Lorin Farrar Wheelwright (December 20, 1909 – November 4, 1987) was an American Latter-day Saint hymnwriter, composer, musical instructor and educator.

Eugene Edward "Gene" Campbell (April 26, 1915 – April 10, 1986) was an American professor of history at Brigham Young University.

Spencer John Palmer (October 4, 1927 – November 27, 2000) was a chronicler of the development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Asia as well as a major player in these developments. He was a historian of Korea, a scholar of comparative world religions, and wrote many books on these and related topics. He was a key figure in the second generation of Korean studies scholars in the United States.

Wilmer Webster Tanner ((1909-12-17)December 17, 1909 – (2011-10-28)October 28, 2011) was an American zoologist, professor and curator. He was associated with Brigham Young University (BYU), in Provo, Utah for much of his life and published extensively on the snakes and salamanders of the Great Basin.

Harold I. Hansen (1914-1992) was a major theatre professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) and the director of the Hill Cumorah Pageant from 1937 to 1977, excluding the years during World War II in which it was not held.
Hansen was born in Logan, Utah. Hansen did his undergraduate education at Utah State University. He then received an offer of a graduate assistantship at the University of Idaho to continue studies in drama, but at the urging of David O. McKay he accepted the call he had already received to serve in the Eastern States Mission. Hansen had very much hoped to serve in Denmark. It was while a missionary in the Eastern States mission that Hansen first served as director of the Hill Cumorah Pageant. Although pageants had been produced at the Hill Cumorah the previous two years, 1937 was the first year that H. Wayne Driggs' script, which would be the basis of the pageant until 1987, was used. Thus as the first director Hansen essentially had to figure out the ways to move from the script to actual production that would remain the main outline of the production for the next half-century, or ten years beyond his retirement as director.
It was also there that he met Betty Kotter, also serving as a missionary in the mission, who he later married. They were actually married at the flagpole on the Hill Cumorah on July 16, 1940, just before a production of the Hill Cumorah Pageant, and about a year after Hansen had finished his mission. Harold would later claim this was where he and Betty first met, but she claimed the story he told of their first encounter was largely made up. They were sealed in the Logan Temple the following month.
After his mission Hansen earned a master's degree in drama at Iowa State University. His thesis was on the history of drama as supported by religious institutions in the United States. From 1941 to 1942 Hansen was a seminary and institute instructor with the Church Educational System. He then performed at The Cleveland Play House until 1945 when he joined the faculty of Michigan State University. He then returned to Utah State University where he joined the Drama faculty and earned a Ph.D. in 1949 with the subject of his doctoral dissertation being a history of Mormon Theatre. In 1952 Hansen was recruited by Brigham Young University president Ernest L. Wilkinson to replace T. Earl Pardoe as head of the Drama department. From his start at BYU Hansen was producing cutting edge shows. During his first season he managed to perform both The Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman. The reason this was exceptional is that at the time both shows were still running on broadway. In many ways the biggest BYU production done by Hansen was Sand in their Shoes, a musical about the Mormon Pioneers with text by Don Oscarson and music by Crawford Gates.
While head of the BYU Theatre Department Hansen oversaw the implementation of graduate studies in 1960 and the move to suitable space in the Harris Fine Arts Center in 1965. Hansen remained the head of the BYU Theatre Department until 1979.
While working at BYU Hansen was also involved as the co-owner and co-director with Lael Woodbury of the Ledges Theatre in Grand Ledge, Michigan from 1960 to 1967. They had previously from 1947 to 1952 run the Proscenium Players, also in Grand Ledge, from 1947 to 1952. From the end of World War II until 1977 Hansen had also served as director of the Hill Cumorah Pageant. In 1977 Hansen was replaced as director of the Hill Cumorah Pageant by Jack Paul Sederholm, who had studied at BYU and was then chair of the communications art department at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. Sederholm had served for 12 years previously as Hansen's chief assistant.In 1967 BYU Press published a book authored by Hansen with the same title as his doctoral dissertation.Hansen and his wife Betty were the parents of four daughters.
The Harris Fine Arts Center has a rehearsal hall named for Hansen.

Virginia Farrer Cutler (December 17, 1905 – May 20, 1993) was an American academic. She was the head of the Home Economics Department at the University of Utah and dean of the College of Family Living at Brigham Young University (BYU). She also worked for the United States Point Four Program in Southeast Asia, established a home science degree at the University of Ghana, and served on the White House Consumer Committee under President Richard Nixon.
Cutler was born in Park City, Utah and was raised in Murray, Utah on a farm. After graduating from high school, she studied education at the University of Utah on a four-year scholarship and graduated in 1927. She married Ralph Garr Cutler in 1929, gave birth to two sons, and became a widow in 1931, just two years after her marriage. She taught school in Utah in order to support her family before moving to California to attend Stanford University. After graduating from Stanford with her master's degree in 1937, Cutler enrolled in Cornell University, receiving her doctorate in 1946. She then became the head of the Home Economics Department at the University of Utah, where she helped establish the Sterling Sill Home Living Center and advocated for higher education for women. She later served as dean of the College of Family Living at Brigham Young University from 1961 to 1972. In between her years working as a university administrator, Cutler traveled to Thailand and Indonesia through the United States Point Four Program (sponsored by the US Department of State) to work as an education advisor and economic consultant. She stayed in Southeast Asia for a total of seven years, establishing schools and training new teachers. Then, in 1966, Cutler traveled to Ghana to establish the Department of Home Science at the University of Ghana. Later in her life, she served as president of the Utah chapter of the American Association of University Women and as a member of the White House Consumer Committee from 1972 to 1975. She died on May 20, 1993, having received multiple honors and awards. The Virginia F. Cutler Lecture Series, held annually at Brigham Young University by the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences, is named after her.

D. Elden Beck (April 11, 1906 – August 9, 1967) was a professor of zoology and entomology at Brigham Young University (BYU). Beck served as the chair beginning in 1962. Before his time at BYU, he served as the head of the Biology Department at Dixie Junior College. He served in the United States Army Medical Department from 1943 to 1945. Beck also helped develop mosquito control programs in Utah County and with the World Health Organization. His research led to the discovery of a new genus and five new species, along with multiple photographs in magazines and multiple collections in museums. In his personal life, he married Florence Robinson in 1933 and had four children. Beck died on August 9, 1967, at the age of 61.