José Honório Rodrigues was born on 20 September 1913 in Rio de Janeiro and died on 06 April 1987. He studied legal sciences at the Faculdade de Direito do Rio de Janeiro [Rio de Janeiro Faculty of Law] between 1933 and 1937, which was soon incorporated into the University of Brazil. Already in the year of his graduation, he earned his first distinction: the 1st Erudition Prize from the Academia Brasileira de Letras [Brazilian Academy of Letters], awarded for a text co-authored with Joaquim Ribeiro entitled "Introdução ao estudo do período holandês de Maurício de Nassau" [Introduction to the Study of the Dutch Period of Maurício de Nassau] (which would later be expanded into his first co-authored book, Civilização holandesa no Brasil [Dutch Civilisation in Brazil]. São Paulo, Companhia Editora Nacional, 1940). It signalled the decisive transformation of the aspiring jurist into a historian. In 1938, he became a technical assistant at the Instituto Nacional do Livro [National Book Institute] (a position he held until 1944), under the direction of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, and replacing José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello. Between 1943 and 1944, with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, he travelled to the United States, where he studied at Columbia University under Frank Tannembaum. In 1945, he became a librarian at the Instituto do Açúcar e do Álcool [Sugar and Alcohol Institute], and in the same year he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Commission for the Study of Brazilian History Texts, where he remained until 1968. Still within the Ministry, in 1946 he began working (until 1956) as a history professor and researcher at the Rio Branco Institute. He was director of the Rare Works and Publications Division of the National Library in Rio de Janeiro from 1946 to 1958. He served as a member of the Instituto Histórico-Geográfico Brasileiro [Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute] (from 1948), on the Board of the Revista de História da América [Journal of American History], the Instituto Panamericano de Geografia e História [Pan-American Institute of Geography and History] (between 1952 and 1965); Associate-Editor of The Hispanic American Historical Review (between 1956 and 1961); corresponding member of the Academia Portuguesa de História [Portuguese Academy of History] (since 1957), the London Royal Historical Society (since 1966), and The Hispanic Society of America (since 1970); member of the Advisory Board of Historical Abstracts (from 1961 to 1969); and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 1969. He was a professor at the Municipal Network of the Federal District (then in Rio de Janeiro) in 1953 and 1956; a professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the State of Guanabara (1961); and a visiting professor at the Universidad de Chile [University of Chile] (1960), the University of Texas (1963/64 and 1966/67), Columbia University (1970), the University of Brasilia (1975), and the Fluminense Federal University (1975).

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