Charles Austin Hersh (1923-1999) was a banker, collector of ancient coins, and numismatic scholar. Charles Austin Hersh (1923-1999) was a banker, collector of ancient coins, and numismatic scholar. He grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1940, and attended Amherst College before enlisting in the Army Air Corp, where he flew in thirty missions during his World War II service. He built up his collection and made contacts throughout the world during the war years. Returning to Amherst, he received his degree in 1946 and went on to earn an M.A. in history from Harvard in 1948. His love of coins eventually led him in 1950 to devote himself full time to numismatic scholarship at the British Museum, where he stayed for three and a half years. He published two groundbreaking articles in Numismatic Chronicle, "Sequence Marks on the Denarii of Publius Crepusius" (1952) and "Overstrikes as Evidence for the History of Roman Republican Coinage" (1953). Upon returning to the United States in 1953, he went into banking, working for Valley National, Bank Leumi, Chelsea National, and Republic National. Hersh became a member of the American Numismatic Society in 1947, a fellow in 1963, and a life fellow in 1997.
