Early Life and Education
The son of Joseph M. Rowen, a teacher, and his wife, Sarah Gordon Rowen, Herbert Rowen was educated entirely in New York City, from his first year in grade school through his doctorate. He earned his degree in 1936 at City College of New York. In 1938, he became assistant to the manager of Converters Paper Company in Newark, New Jersey and, two years later, on 28 June 1940, he married Mildred Ringel (died January 1999), with whom he later had three children. Rowen remained with Converters Paper until 1942, when he joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps and spent three years in England and France.
On his return to New York from military service in 1946, Rowen followed his growing interests in languages and took a position as an editorial research assistant with the American College Dictionary at Random House. On completing that job, he thought of going on to graduate work in French, but was advised by a former teacher to use his linguistic skills to study history. Following that advice, he entered Columbia University and completed his M.A. degree in history in 1948 with a thesis on "Annexation of the Congo by Belgium; a parliamentary study". finding this too controversial a subject to carry on to doctoral research, he shifted his area of study to Early Modern Europe and became the first of many graduate students of a new Columbia University faculty member, Garrett Mattingly. Under his tutelage, Rowen completed his doctoral dissertation on "Pomponne and De Witt (1669-1671); a study of French policy on the eve of the Dutch War" and was awarded his Ph.D. at Columbia in 1951.
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