Subdivision
| • | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Hans-Georg Beck | | | Institution: | University of Munich | | | Year Elected: | 1988 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1910 | | | Death Date: | 5/25/99 | | | | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Walter Burkert | | | Institution: | University of Zurich | | | Year Elected: | 1987 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | Death Date: | March 11, 2015 | | | | | | |
An Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Zurich, Walter Burkert was a well-known historian of Greek religion. He brought methodological innovation and keen insight to the ancient texts and materials of his field, and his work has implications for all aspects of ancient Mediterranean studies, from literature to science to philosophy to religion. Dr. Burkert received training in classical philology, history and philosophy at the Universities of Erlangen and Munich, obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Erlangen in 1955 and taught there over much of the next ten years. In 1965 he served as a junior fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. for one year before becoming a professor of classical philology at the Technical University of Berlin. He joined the faculty of the University of Zurich in 1969 and taught there for 27 years before retiring. He had published books on the balance between lore and science in the followers of Pythagoras; on ritual and archaic cult survival; on the ritual killing at the heart of religion; and on the reception in the Hellenic world of Near Eastern and Persian culture, which sets Greek religion in its wider Aegean and Near Eastern context. Among his works are Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (English translation, 1982), which is considered an outstanding account of concepts in Greek religion; Ancient Mystery Cults (1987); and Creation of the Sacred (1996). Walter Burkert died March 11, 2015, at the age of 84 in Zurich, Switzerland. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Herbert Hunger | | | Institution: | University of Vienna | | | Year Elected: | 1980 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | July 9, 2000 | | | | |
| 4 | Name: | Professor Jean Leclant | | | Institution: | Collège de France & Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Institut de France | | | Year Elected: | 1999 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1920 | | | Death Date: | September 16, 2011 | | | | | | |
Jean Leclant served as Secrétaire Perpétuel of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres at the Institut de France since 1983 and Professor Emeritus at the Collège de France since 1990. Previously he was a professor at the University of Strasbourg (1955-63), the Sorbonne (1963-79), and the Collège de France (1979-90) and served as Director d'Etudes at the Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes (1964-90). Jean Leclant was among the outstanding Egyptologists of his generation. He participated in many conferences in France and abroad (Africa, Japan, USA) and was an acknowledged administrator. His publication record was outstanding, with emphasis on excavations, Egyptian-Sudanese relations, the cult of Isis abroad, and Pyramid texts. Leclant's bibliography of books, articles, reviews, etc., through 1993 consisted of 993 items. The anniversary publication in his honor, Hommages à Jean Leclant, consisted of four volumes with contributions by 88 colleagues, friends, and students. He is the author of Mentouemhat, Quatrième prophète d'Amon, Prince de la ville (1961); Recherches sur les monuments thébains de la XXVème dynastie dite éthiopienne (1965); (with J. Ph. Lauer) Mission archéologique de Saqqarah I, le temple haut du complexe funéraire du roi Téti (1972); (with J. Goyon and R. Parker) The Edifice of Taharqa by the Sacred Lake of Karnak (1979); (with H. Danin) Le Second Siècle de l'Institut de France, 3 vol. (1994-2005); Les Textes des Pyramides de Pepy I (2001); and (with C. Carrier, C. Rilly, et al) Répertoire d'Epigraphie Méroitique, 3 vols. (2000). Professor Leclant has received many honors, including Grand-Officier, Légion d'honneur; Grand-Officier, Ordre du Mérite; Commdr. Ordre des Palmes Académiques; Commdr. Ordre des Arts et Lettres; Chevalier du Mérite Militaire; Imperial Order of Menelik (Ethiopia); and Grand Officer ordre de la République d'Egypte. In 1993 he received the Balzan Prize. He was a member of many academies, including the Accademia dei Lincei, the British Academy, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Academies of Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and Romania. He was elected as a foreign member of the American Philosophical Society in 1999. Jean Leclant died on September 16, 2011, in Paris, France at the age of 91. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Dmitri S. Likhachev | | | Institution: | Russian Academy of Sciences | | | Year Elected: | 1992 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1906 | | | Death Date: | 10/1/99 | | | | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Domenico Maffei | | | Institution: | Università di Roma "La Sapienza" | | | Year Elected: | 1986 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1925 | | | Death Date: | July 2009 | | | | | | |
A Professor of the History of Italian Law Emeritus, Domenico Maffei had served on the faculty of the University of Rome since 1979. He received his D. Juris from the University of Siena in 1947, where he was also professor of Italian law from 1961-69. Dr. Maffei has also taught law at the University of Macerata (1955-61) and Italian culture at the University of California, Berkeley (1967-68). A leader in medieval history (with a book on the donation of Constantine) and legal history (with studies of contract law), Dr. Maffei ably related jurisprudence to both social and intellectual history. His many books include Gli inizi dell'Umanesimo giurdico (1956) and Il giovane Machiavelli banchiere con Berto Berti a Roma (1973). Professor Maffei died in July 2009 at the age of 84 in Italy. | |
| 7 | Name: | Sir Dimitri Obolensky | | | Institution: | University of Oxford | | | Year Elected: | 1990 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1918 | | | Death Date: | December 23, 2001 | | | | |
| 8 | Name: | Dr. Georges Le Rider | | | Institution: | Collège de France & l'Institut de France | | | Year Elected: | 1996 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1928 | | | Death Date: | July 3, 2014 | | | | | | |
French historian Georges le Rider was a professor at the Collège de France, a member of l'Institut de France and a specialist in Greek numismatics. Born in Saint-Hernin in 1928, he became a member of the French School of Athens in 1952 and of the French Institute of Archaeology in Beirut in 1955. In 1958 he began his career at the Bibliothèque Nationale, where he would serve as conservator and director of the department of medals, currencies and antiques. In 1975 he was named General Administrator of the Bibliothèque Nationale. He served in this capacity until 1981 when he assumed direction of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul. Georges le Rider also served as a professor at the University of Lille and as director of the CNRS research group. At the Collège de France he focused on economic and monetary history. His published works include the three volume "Etudes d'histoire monetaire et financiere du monde grec. Ecrits 1958-1998," (with François de Callatay) "Séleucides and Ptolémées: The Monetary and Financial Heritage of Alexander the Great" (2006), and Alexander the Great: Coinage, Finance and Policy (2007). Georges Le Rider died on July 3, 2014 at the age of 86 in Givors, Rhône, France. | |
| 9 | Name: | Professor Martin de Riquer | | | Institution: | University of Barcelona | | | Year Elected: | 1975 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | September 17, 2013 | | | | | | |
Literary scholar Martin de Riquer was born in Spain in 1914. Author of numerous articles in professional journals, he has long been regarded as one of the most productive and brilliant Spanish literary scholars and philologists. In his prodigious and consistently splendid scholarship, he tirelessly explored and significantly illuminated almost every facet and genre of the medieval and Renaissance literatures of Spain, France, Catalonia and Provence, with important excursions into Italian literature and the history of medieval architecture in Spain as well. His works are characterized by originality, great erudition and true stylistic elegance. Dr. de Riquer was a member of the Real Academia Espanola and had served as president of the Real Academia de Buenas Letras of Barcelona. He died September 17, 2013, at the age of 99 in Barcelona, Spain. | |
| 10 | Name: | Hon. Sir Steven Runciman | | | Institution: | Trinity College, Cambridge & British Academy | | | Year Elected: | 1965 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1903 | | | Death Date: | November 1, 2000 | | | | |
| 11 | Name: | Dr. Peter Schäfer | | | Institution: | Princeton University & Freie Universität, Berlin | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1943 | | | | | | |
Peter Schäfer is the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion at Princeton University and concurrently holds the chair of Jewish Studies at the Free University of Berlin. He was a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Oxford, Jerusalem and Yale, at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In addition to the American Philosophical Society, he is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and holds an honorary degree (Dr. theol.) from the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. In 1994 he was awarded the Leibniz Prize of 1.5 Million German Mark, the highest award for German scholars. In 2013 he received Princeton University's Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.
Peter Schäfer has published extensively about rabbinic literature and history, early Jewish mysticism, and Wissenschaft des Judentums. He edited the corpus of Hekhalot literature, the Talmud Yerushalmi and (with Sh. Shaked) magical texts from the Cairo Geniza. His most recent books are Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World, Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 1997 (paperback edition 1998), Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002 (paperback 2004) and (as editor) The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2003. | |
| 12 | Name: | Dr. Sarah Stroumsa | | | Institution: | Hebrew University of Jerusalem | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1950 | | | | | | |
Sarah Stroumsa is the Alice and Jack Ormut Professor Emerita of Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her academic education at the Hebrew University, as well as at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. She taught in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature and the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she served as Vice-Rector and then as Rector. She is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, as well as of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. She is a laureate of the Humboldt Research Award, a holder of the Italian Order of Merit, and a recipient of the Leopold Lucas Prize.
Her academic focus is the history of philosophical and theological thought in Arabic in the early Islamic Middle Ages, and the medieval Judaeo-Arabic philosophical literature. She strives to offer a multifocal approach to the study of intellectual history, an approach she used in her publications as well as in the Intellectual Encounters of the Islamicate World, a master’s program she initiated with her colleagues Sabine Schmidtke and Sari Nusseibeh. Among her published books in English: Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rāwaādī, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, and Their Impact on Islamic Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Maimonides in his World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton: Princeton University, 2010); Dāwūd al-Muqammaṣ, Twenty Chapters (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2016); and Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). Her current work focuses on methodological questions in the study of medieval intellectual history (e.g. linear and non-linear tracing of influences, the reliability of unique sources, and the reconstruction of unwritten elements of the texts, such as mimic and tone). | |
| 13 | Name: | Dr. Joan Thirsk | | | Institution: | University of Oxford | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1922 | | | Death Date: | October 3, 2013 | | | | | | |
A scholar of agrarian history, Joan Thirsk was Reader in Economic History at the University of Oxford from 1965 to 1983. No one did more to emphasise the significance of the land in early modern England than Dr. Thirsk, whose writings represent an important contribution to the national history while also pointing the way for future research. Dr. Thirsk's many authoritative works include English Peasant Farming (1957); Tudor Enclosures (1959); The Agrarian History of England Wales, IV, 1500-1640 (1967), V, 1640-1760 (1984); The Restoration (1976); Economic Policy and Projects (1978); Alternative Agriculture: A History from the Black Death to the Present Day (1997); Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads, Fashions, 1500-1760 (2007); and Hadlow: Life, Land and People in a Wealden Paris, 1460-1600 (2007). She also served as the editor of Agricultural History Review (1964-72). She was an honorary fellow of St. Hilda's College and Kellogg College and had also taught at the London School of Economics. Joan Thirsk was elected an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 1982. She died October 3, 2013, at the age of 91 in Kent, England. | |
| 14 | Name: | Dr. Martin Litchfield West | | | Institution: | All Souls College, University of Oxford | | | Year Elected: | 2010 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1937 | | | Death Date: | July 13, 2015 | | | | | | |
Martin Litchfield West wrote the following biography in 2010, the year he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. He died July 13, 2015, at the age of 77.
I was born in London on 23 September 1937, the first child of Maurice Charles West, Civil Engineer, and his wife Catherine. We lived through the Second World War at Hampton, Middlesex, far enough out of London to receive only occasional bombs in the neighborhood, though the house was damaged one night.
The first seven years of my education were spent at a local primary school. Then I was put into the more challenging and stimulating milieu of Colet Court, the junior school attached to one of the major British independent schools, St. Paul's, and after three years I graduated to the main school. There was a strong emphasis there on Latin and Greek, which suited my growing interest in languages, and I had some excellent teachers. In 1955 I went with a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, to pursue the four-year Literae Humaniores course. Among those who taught and influenced me there were Gordon Williams (my college tutor), E. R. Dodds, and Eduard Fraenkel, whose famous seminars were a daunting test-bed for fledgling scholars.
In 1959 I embarked on graduate work, choosing Hesiod as my area of study and Hugh Lloyd-Jones as my supervisor. He did me a great service by arranging for me to spend the next summer semester in Germany under Reinhold Merkelbach. Besides raising my German to a state of fluency, those months opened my eyes to different approaches, and I made the acquaintance of such powerful scholars as Walter Burkert, Rudolf Kassel, and Winfried Bühler, who were to remain lifelong friends.
Before leaving for Germany I had been elected to a three-year Junior Research Fellowship at St. John's College, Oxford, which I took up on my return. On the last day of 1960 I married my wife Stephanie, whom I had met at Fraenkel's seminars; she was now also doing graduate work and was to establish herself as a scholar in her own right. In 1963, following several unsuccessful applications for permanent positions in universities, I had the good fortune to be offered a Fellowship in Oxford at University College. The same summer we had our first child and I completed my doctoral thesis, a commentary on Hesiod's Theogony (augmented with a critical text and published in 1966).
I taught at University College for eleven years, while continuing to publish. In the fall of 1967 I spent a sabbatical term at Harvard as a visiting lecturer - my first experience of the USA. In 1974 I was asked whether I would be interested in the chair in Greek at Bedford College, London; it was intimated that I could continue to live in Oxford, where Stephanie was now employed and where our children were at school. I accepted the offer and began a new life of travelling up to London for a few days each week.
The London University scene, initially tranquil, became turbulent in the early eighties. There was official pressure for 'rationalization,' for mergers of colleges and departments, and after strenuous discussions it came about that Bedford merged with Royal Holloway College. This meant that my workplace was transferred from central London to a site out in Surrey, a little closer to Oxford but more awkward to reach by public transport. This forced me, at the age of 47, to learn to drive a car, something I had never before needed to do but much enjoyed doing once I mastered it.
During my London period I had two further memorable extended stays abroad: in 1980 a month in Japan as a guest of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and in 1986 a quarter as Visiting Professor at UCLA.
In 1991 I was successful with an application for a Senior Research Fellowship at All Souls College Oxford, as desirable a position as any in the academic world, and one that freed me from the regular commuting to Surrey and from increasingly tiresome administrative chores. It gave me the leisure to apply myself to learning Akkadian and some other Semitic languages, which I wanted to do in order to write a book on West Asiatic elements in early Greek poetry (The East Face of Helicon, 1997). I believe it is valuable for a classicist to learn other ancient languages besides Greek and Latin, and as a result of doing so I have been able, since 1994, to publish half a dozen articles on Mesopotamian and Iranian topics, and recently to complete a translation of Zoroaster's Gathas (to appear in August 2010). In 2000 my work received a wholly unexpected tribute in the form of the international Balzan Prize for Classical Antiquity.
I reached the statutory age of retirement in 2004, and my status at All Souls changed to that of Emeritus Fellow. I remain active in research and publication, and take pleasure in the tokens of recognition that continue to descend on me from time to time, such as the Festschrift produced for my 70th birthday in 2007, the honorary doctorate conferred by the University of Cyprus in 2008 (which came with a splendiferous robe and hat), and most recently my election to the American Philosophical Society.
Martin West | |
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