David Christian (historian)

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Dr. David Gilbert Christian (born 1946) is an Anglo-American historian.

Christian was born in Brooklyn, New York, of British and American parents. He grew up in Africa and in England, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. at Oxford University.

Subsequently he taught at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia for thirty years before moving to San Diego State University in 2002. Originally an historian of Russia who wrote several books on that subject, including a history of vodka, Christian has in recent years become interested in writing history, as he puts it, "on very large scales." To this end, he has developed a World History course informally entitled "Big History" which tells the story of the universe--the entire universe, from the moment of the Big Bang 13 billion years ago to the present day.

Using this novel approach, Dr. Christian structures the course to reflect, roughly, the relatively minuscule role played by the human race in the Earth's overall development: homo sapiens does not appear until more than midway through a 15-week semester. Dr. Christian's book Maps of Time, published by the University of California Press, mirrors the content of the course.