Hunter R. Rawlings III served as the seventeenth president of the University of Iowa, from 1988 to 1995.

A classics scholar, Rawlings was a noted author and editor as well as professor when he was named university president in 1988. His book, The Structure of Thucydides' History, was published in 1981.

Rawlings is a 1966 graduate of Haverford College, with honors in classics. He received a Ph.D. in 1970 from Princeton University, where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and National Defense Education Act Fellow.

In 1970 Rawlings joined the classics faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder and, in 1978, became department chair. He was named full professor in 1980 and served as associate vice chancellor for instruction from 1980 to 1984. He received the University of Colorado Teaching Excellence Award in 1979.

While president at Iowa, Rawlings chaired the Governor's Commission on Foreign Language Studies and International Education for the State of Iowa from 1988 to 1991. In 1995 as he completed his presidency, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. During the same year he was named president of Cornell University.

Rawlings was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1944 and is married to Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings. They have four children.