Nathaniel Davis, 1925-2011, was an American diplomat, professor, and author. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 12, 1925, to Harvey Nathaniel Davis, a professor at Harvard University, and Alice Rohde Davis, a research physician. He received his B.A. from Brown University in 1946, following service in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Davis completed a master's degree and Ph.D. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University in 1960. A well-known career diplomat who served in the United States Foreign Service and the Peace Corps for 36 years, Davis spent his final years teaching at the Claremont Colleges in California.

Davis began his Foreign Service career with an assignment in Prague in 1947, followed by postings in Florence, Rome and Moscow, before returning to the U.S. in 1956 to work at the Soviet Desk at the State Department in Washington, D.C. His next foreign assignment was in Caracas, Venezuela, from 1960 to 1962. From 1962 to 1965, he served in the Peace Corps, first as Special Assistant to the Director, R. Sargent Shriver, and later Deputy Director for Program Development and Operations. He left the Peace Corps in 1965 to serve as the United States Envoy to Bulgaria (1965-1966). After his ambassadorship in Bulgaria, he served on the staff of the National Security Council in the White House, as Lyndon Johnson's senior advisor on Soviet and Eastern European affairs, as well as the United Nations. In 1968, he went to Guatemala to serve as Ambassador to Guatemala (1968-1971), followed by service as Ambassador to Chile (1971-1973). He was ambassador in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende and through the coup that deposed him. Davis wrote a history of that period titled The Last Two Years of Salvador Allende (Cornell University Press, 1985). Upon his return from Chile, Davis held two positions at the assistant secretary level: as Director General of the Foreign Service (1973-1975) and as the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Ford administration from 1975 to 1976. Davis resigned from the latter post over a policy difference with then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger regarding covert action in Angola. Davis was subsequently appointed Ambassador to Switzerland (1976-1977). In 1977, Davis moved to Newport, R.I., where he taught at the Naval War College for six years as Diplomat in Residence. In 1983, he retired from the Foreign Service.

Upon his retirement from the Foreign Service, Davis accepted a position as the first Alexander and Adelaide Hixon Professor of Humanities at Harvey Mudd College, in Claremont, California, where he taught political science from 1983 until he retired from teaching in 2002. At that time he was named Professor Emeritus of Political Science. During his time at Harvey Mudd College, he wrote A Long Walk to Church: a Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy, using research he had been working on since 1947 and which had been the basis for his doctoral dissertation. He died May 16, 2011, at the age of 86 in Claremont, California.