David K. Wyatt was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, on September 21, 1937.[1] He was raised in Iowa. He studied philosophy at Harvard University, and received a B.A. in 1959. He furthered his studies at Boston and Cornell University, respectively, where he graduated with an M.A. in 1960 and a Ph.D. in 1966, both in history.[1] His dissertation, which discussed political reform in Thailand, was published in 1969 as Thailand: The Politics of Reform. He learned to speak Thai fluently. He married Alene Wilson, and had three children and five grandchildren.
In October 2005, he sold his library–consisting of roughly 15,000 volumes, many of them written in Thai, including Thai royal journals–to the Southeast Asia Collection at Ohio University.[3]