John Chadwick
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John Chadwick (21 May 1920 – 24 November 1998) was an English linguist and classical scholar most famous for his role in deciphering Linear B, along with Michael Ventris.
[edit] Early life and education
He was born in London and educated at St Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and he served as an officer the Royal Navy's Special Branch during the Second World War.
After the war he married, and he was on the staff of the Oxford Classical Dictionary before beginning a Classics lectureship at Cambridge in 1952. That year he began working with Ventris on the progressive decipherment of Linear B, the two writing Documents in Mycenean Greek in 1956 following a controversial first paper three years earlier. Chadwick's philological skills were applied to Ventris' initial theory that Linear B was an early form of Greek rather than another Mediterranean language.
After Ventris' death Chadwick became the figurehead of the Linear B work, writing the accessible popular book The Decipherment of Linear B in 1958 and revising Documents in Mycenean Greek in 1978.
He retired in 1984, by which time he had become the Perceval Maitland Laurence Reader in Classics at Cambridge. He continued his scholarship until his death, being an active member of several prestigious international societies and writing numerous popular and academic articles.
[edit] Publications
- Chadwick, John (1958). The Decipherment of Linear B. Second edition (1990). Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-39830-4.
- Chadwick, John (1976). The Mycenaean World. Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-29037-6.
- Ventris, Michael and Chadwick, John (1956). Documents in Mycenaean Greek. Second edition (1974). Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-08558-6.
