MORE FULBRIGHT SCHOLARS IN NUMISMATICS

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V28 2025 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 28, Number 38, 2025, Article 14

Last week, Jeff Burke submitted an article on Fulbright Scholars in the numismatic world. Here are some more. First up is Ken Berger, who submitted these notes. -Editor

Ken Berger
I obtained my doctorate in Environmental Science & Engineering from UCLA. A few years later, I returned to school and obtained a second master's degree; this time in Asian Studies. Upon completion of this degree, I was immediately awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1989-90 at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan.

The following year, I was named a Visiting Specialist by Taiwan's National Science Council and for the next three years a Visiting Professor by Tunghai University. Besides my teaching duties, I also performed research on feng shui as a natural science and the impacts of oil spills in the South China Sea.

While overseas I gave a seminar at the University of San Carlos in Cebu, Philippines. Attending this seminar was Prof. Humaida Jumalon, the daughter of Prof. Julian Jumalon. After the seminar, I mentioned to her my interest in WW2 Philippine emergency & guerrilla paper money. She told me that her father had designed many of these notes for various provinces during the war. This led to a number of visits with her father during the five years I was living overseas. The initial result of these meetings was an article in The Numismatist ("Cebu Emergency Notes of World War II", The Numismatist (May 1993), Vol. 106, No. 5: 643-648). This was the first major study of the Cebu notes and, more importantly, was the first time Prof. J. Jumalon's involvement became well-known throughout the numismatic community.

Subsequent to this article, I published three books on various Philippine notes. Two of these books were the result of an Author's Grant from the Central States Numismatic Society which enabled me to travel to the Philippines years later to do an in depth study of approximately 200,000 notes that were held by Museo Sugbo (Cebu Provincial Museum). Both of these books were awarded a Literary Achievement Award (Honorable Mention) by IBNS. In 2022, I was awarded a Leadership Appreciation Award by the Philippine Collectors' Forum (PCF) for my contributions to Philippine numismatics. Last year, I was a co-author with Dr. Matthias Voigt and Neil Shafer on a comprehensive catalog of all Philippine emergency/ guerrilla notes that were issued during the war. This catalog was the first update of Shafer's classic 1974 book about these notes.

Norman D. Nicol, Ph.D.

I was trained in Arabic at the Defense Language Institute, Monterey CA as a young Air Force recruit during most of the calendar year of 1965. I was later stationed in Athens, Greece during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Because of that experience and my language training, I developed an interest in Middle East History. I undertook my university studies with that field as my main area of study. While a graduate student at the University of Washington (Seattle), I applied for and was granted a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad Scholarship for 12 months in 1977 - 1978. I long held an interest in coins and so had combined that with my academic studies as I traveled under the Fulbright to a number of countries to study both medieval Islamic coins and Arabic manuscripts, gathering coin data and textual materials for my chosen thesis topic.

During the year of travel I carried out research at the British Museum and British Library (London), the Ashmolean Museum and Bodleian Library (Oxford), the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), the Archaeological Museum and Süleymaniye Library (Istanbul), the National Library and Museum of Islamic Art (Cairo). Upon returning to Seattle, I spent the next year writing my dissertation and received the doctorate in 1979. I returned to Cairo the following year under a Smithsonian post-doctoral grant and wrote a catalog of the coins and related items in the Egyptian National Library, published in 1982.

Since then I have published a number of other books, journal articles and book reviews dealing with numismatic subjects, including four volumes of the catalog of Islamic coins in the Ashmolean Museum while under a 12-year visiting fellowship at Oxford. My other numismatic interest was in German coins. For a number of years I did consulting work and writing for Krause Publications in Iola, Wisconsin, mainly helping to edit their series of standard catalogs of world coins. I also authored three editions of Krause's Standard Catalog of German Coins.

Having been a Fulbright scholar helped to direct my career in serious numismatic research and writing.

As I was returning to the U.S. from Egypt in 1981, I was contacted by Steve Album in Santa Rosa CA and offered a position assisting him in his growing business of dealing in Islamic and Indian coins. I moved to Santa Rosa in May of that year and although my background was mainly in academic numismatics, Steve taught me much about dealing in coins. I worked full time as his consultant for the next eighteen years. During that time, I mainly prepared coins for his retail trade stock and assisted him at coins shows mainly in California, but also at large annual shows such as the New York International, the Chicago show and also shows in London, Zürich, Munich, among others. Steve also encouraged me to continue my scholarly studies of Islamic coins resulting in a number of journal articles and several monographs.

In 1999, I moved back to my home area of Northeastern Pennsylvania to help care for my elderly parents. By that time I had been deeply immersed in genealogy and started a professional genealogical business. I continued to maintain a connection with Steve, who sent me quantities of coins to process for him and enter them online into his stock database. I also helped him with coin shows, mainly those in New York City and Baltimore. By about 2014 or so, Steve's business had grown to include two business partners and was now incorporated as Stephen Album Rare Coins (SARC). He now had a staff of about ten people and no longer required my input, which was fine with me as I was about to retire in any case. Steve and I still stay in contact and sometimes have long phone chats. All in all, my time working with Steve over the years has been nothing but rewarding.

Thanks, everyone. The photo of Norman D. Nicol was taken while he was giving a paper in the Vatican Library September 24, 2011 while attending the 3rd Simone Assemani Symposium on Islamic Coins.

NOTE: Jeff is also aware of Fulbright Scholars Donald Erlenkotter and John Photinopolous, suggested by Pete Smith. He was familiar with them but could only find limited information and decided not to include them in his piece. -Editor

"No doubt more names will surface as well. For example, I identified a numismatic scholar who was awarded a Fulbright to the University of Florida for 2025-2026. However, I couldn't find this person in the UF faculty profiles, so I decided not to include him. Some of the most recent Fulbright Awards for stateside and overseas locations seem to have been cancelled. The whole scenario is a little unclear.

"For my article, I focused on past Fulbrighters who were also distinguished numismatists. Then I included a few more recent Fulbrighters who are still alive. A key point for both categories was that I wanted to have enough information about each individual in order to come up with reasonable profiles."