Latter Day Saints from Utah

Wendell_J._Ashton

Wendell Jeremy Ashton (October 13, 1912 – August 31, 1995) was an American journalist and author. He was a publisher of the Deseret News and director of the Public Communications Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He was the elder brother of church apostle Marvin J. Ashton.

Delila_(Richards)_Abbott

Delila M. "Dee" Richards Abbott (November 4, 1908 – December 1, 1998) was an American politician and businesswoman. Throughout her life she was active in both local and national politics, and her accomplishments range from writing fiction novels to serving on the Defense Advisory Committee for Women. Abbott worked to bring more women into the public sphere, saying that "Women are a neglected resource. They are not sufficiently recognized and their full potential is not often developed". Abbott attended LDS Business College. Aside from the Defense Advisory Committee for Women, Abbott served on multiple committees and campaigns.

Stanley_Smith_Stevens

Stanley Smith Stevens (November 4, 1906 – January 18, 1973) was an American psychologist who founded Harvard's Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, studying psychoacoustics, and he is credited with the introduction of Stevens's power law. Stevens authored a milestone textbook, the 1400+ page Handbook of Experimental Psychology (1951). He was also one of the founding organizers of the Psychonomic Society. In 1946 he introduced a theory of levels of measurement widely used by scientists but whose use in some areas of statistics has been criticized. In addition, Stevens played a key role in the development of the use of operational definitions in psychology.A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Stevens as the 52nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

Larry_T._Wimmer

Larry Turley Wimmer (born December 8, 1935) is the Warren and Wilson Dusenberry University Professor at Brigham Young University (BYU). He is a professor of economics who specializes in American economic history and the economics of aging.

Levi_S._Peterson

Levi Savage Peterson (born 1933) is a Mormon biographer, essayist and fictionist whose best-known works include a seminal biography of Juanita Brooks, his own autobiography, and his novel The Backslider, a "standard for the contemporary Mormon novel." He was born and reared in the Mormon community of Snowflake, Arizona and is an emeritus professor of English at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in French-speaking Switzerland and Belgium from 1954 to 1957. He edited Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought from 2004 to 2008.
Peterson's work as a writer centers in "the possibility of wrong behavior"; his works "variously examine the tension between Sainthood as fact and Sainthood as aspiration, between belief and doubt, and between expected blessings and the traumas of reality." Similarly, he taught his writing students to "write from the other side of your inhibitions." In an essay entitled "In Defense of a Mormon Erotica," Peterson stated that "prudery reinforces pornography" by hiding sexual feelings.: 124  He encouraged Mormon authors to include sexual content and obscenities (in an appropriate amounts) in their work, writing that "there is a vitality in sexual imagery and obscenities.": 124, 127 Peterson has been the recipient of several AML Awards: Short Fiction (1978) for "The Confessions of Augustine", Short Fiction (1982–1983) for "The Canyons of Grace", Special Award for Short Story Anthology (1982–1983) for Greening Wheat: Fifteen Mormon Short Stories, Novel (1986) for The Backslider, Special Recognition in Biography (1988) for Juanita Brooks: Mormon Woman Historian, Honorary Lifetime Membership (1988), Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters (2009), and Short Fiction (2016) for "Kid Kirby". Additionally, his work has been a finalist in the short fiction category twice: 2014 ("Jesus Enough") and 2019 ("Bode and Iris").

Spencer_L._Kimball

Spencer LeVan Kimball (August 26, 1918 – October 26, 2003) was an American lawyer and professor at the University of Utah, the University of Michigan Law School and the University of Chicago.
Kimball was the oldest son of Spencer W. Kimball and his wife Camilla Eyring Kimball. He was born in Thatcher, Arizona and raised in Safford, Arizona. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Arizona and then served in the United States navy on the Admiral's staff as a Japanese interpreter during World War II.
He received his law degree from the University of Utah. He was later a Rhodes Scholar studying at Lincoln College, Oxford. He received his SJD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He later served on the law faculty there and was the youngest dean of law in the history of the University of Utah. He was also on the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School and the University of Chicago Law School. At the University of Chicago he was the Seymour Logan Professor of Law.
Kimball helped to established an American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Utah.
Although he was widely associated with the LDS Church because of his father's prominent leadership positions, Kimball ceased his activity with the church while in his thirties and remained irreligious for the rest of his life. Kimball never desired to formally leave the LDS church, and took pride in his Mormon pioneer heritage and his father's position as church president, but gradually stopped believing in the divine claims of the LDS church and all other religions.