Robert H. Fuson was born in 1927 in Indiana but grew up in North Carolina. He served in both the Army and Navy during World War II; afterwards he took degrees in Geography at Indiana (A.B.), Florida State (M.A.), and Louisiana State (Ph.D.). During the Korean War he held a commission in the Air Force reserve and was an intelligence analyst in Washington.
Fuson's interest in the voyages of Columbus began in 1955, while he was doing research in Panama and searching for the site of Columbus' only attempt to settle the mainland. Since then he has published numerous professional articles on the subject and is presently acclaimed to be one of the world's foremost Columbus scholars. He was chairman of the First International Columbus Symposium (Miami, 1982), first president of the Florida Society of Geographers (1964), and a consultant to the National Geographic Society for their Columbus project in 1986.
A faculty member at the University of South Florida since 1960, Dr. Fuson was named Professor Emeritus of Geography in 1986. He lived in Temple Terrace, Florida, with his wife, Amelia, and was an accomplished musician and an avid amateur radio operator.
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