Noble David Cook

Noble David Cook (1941 - April 8, 2024) was a historian and author who studied the history of colonial Peru. He taught at the Florida International University from 1992, and was made a professor emeritus there in 2017.

Cook earnt a master's degree from University of Florida,¹ then moved to study at the University of Texas at Austin for a PhD in history under Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz. He graduated in 1972.² In 1981, Cook published Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1520–1620, in which he modelled population decline in and analyzed the demographics of Peru during Spanish colonialism.³⁴ He largely wrote the book based on research he conducted in Peru during the 1970s.¹

He taught at University of Bridgeport in Connecticut.⁵ While there, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991 for his work on Iberian and Latin American History.⁶ Cook transferred to Florida International University in 1992.²⁵ In 2005, he wrote about the Taíno for volume three of the Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.⁷ In 2007 he was made a professor emeritus at FIU⁵ and, in 2008, was made an honorary professor of the humanities at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.¹

Cook was born in 1941. He was married to Alexandra Parma Cook, and the couple had one child.² He died on April 8, 2024. A year before his death, he had been diagnosed with cancer.¹

He and his family were close friends with Peruvian historians Franklin Pease García-Yrigoyen and Mariana Mould de Pease.¹