Jack Wilson Lydman (February 6, 1914 – September 17, 2005) was an actor, Foreign Service Officer, and a United States Ambassador to Malaysia (1969–1973). After work with the Surry Players at the Mercury Theatre in New York City he join the US Army Air Forces during World War II becoming a division chief in the Strategic Bombing Survey of the War Department. He married and joined the United States Department of State in 1946 as a research assistant becoming chief of the Far East political section then deputy director of the Office of Intelligence Research. Commissioned as a Foreign Service Officer in 1955 he was posted as deputy director of the Research Center of the South East Asia Treaty Organization to Bangkok. In 1958 he was assigned to Surabaya with responsibility for Portuguese Timor