De Lamar Jensen

De Lamar Jensen was a historian of early modern Europe and a faculty member of the history department at Brigham Young University (BYU). He wrote several books on Europe during the renaissance and reformation.

Biography
Jensen was born and raised in Idaho. He was a fighter pilot in World War II. After the war he studied for a year at BYU and then was a physics teacher at a high school in Idaho for a year. He then served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mexico and Guatemala. It was while serving as a missionary that he decided to shift to studying history. After his mission he returned to BYU and in 1952 earned a BA in history. He then earned an MA and PhD from Columbia University.

Jensen joined the BYU history department in 1957. In 1979 he was a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation.

Among Jensen's works are Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation, Reformation Europe: Age of Reform and Revolution, Confrontation at Worms: Martin Luther and the Diet of Worms and Diplomacy and Dogmatism: Bernardino de Mendoza and the French Catholic League.

Jensen has written several encyclopedia articles including the one on the Protestant Reformation for the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. He also wrote the foreword to Arnold K. Garr's Christopher Columbus: A Latter-day Saints perspective.

From 1980-1983 Jensen served as the president of the Peru Arequipa Mission.

Jensen had been granted emeritus status from BYU by 1992 at which time he headed the universities committee in charge of celebration the quinta-centennial of Christopher Columbus' voyage to the Americas. As recently as 2003 Jensen was a participant at a BYU lecture on Latter-day Saint perspectives on world history.

In 2008 the BYU history department established at De Lamar Jensen lectureship in Jensen's honor.