John G. Hawthorne

John Greenfield Hawthorne was born in Newcastle, England,[1][2] on 6 June 1915.[3] He had two brothers, Edward and William.[1] In 1937 he graduated with an honours degree in classics from Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge,[4] and two years later received a master's degree from Harvard University.[1][5] During World War II Hawthorne served in many diplomatic posts, including commercial attaché in the British Embassy in Belgium.[1] In 1946 he was awarded another master's, this one by Cambridge.[1]

In 1949, while a professor at the University of Chicago, Hawthorne obtained a Ph.D. there, with guidance from Gertrude Smith and Benedict Einarson.[1] At the time, Chicago was one of the very few schools to offer a doctorate in classics.[6] Hawthorne's dissertation, Gorgias of Leontini: A Critical Appraisal with Translation and Commentary of the Extant Fragments, offered what he described as the first complete English translation of the fragmentary writings of Gorgias of Leontini.[7]

Hawthorne was named an assistant professor at the University of Chicago in 1946.[1] In 1952 he was made an associate professor of classics, and from 1957 to 1960 he chaired the department.[1] From 1956 to 1963, he was also the president of the Chicago Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.[1] In 1957 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to undertake research at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece,[8] where he also conducted excavations.[9][10][11] He lectured on the subject of archaeology, including as a visitor to places like the Universities of Iowa and Minnesota.[12][13]

In 1963 Hawthorne, together with Cyril Stanley Smith, published a translation of the works on metallurgy by Theophilus. The book took a technical approach, and followed a 1961 translation by Charles Reginald Dodwell that took a philological approach.[14] As the historian Lynn Townsend White Jr. wrote, "[h]enceforth anyone dealing with Theophilus must read both these books simultaneously, one in each hand. While Smith and Hawthorne built on Dodwell, the latter, save in specific instances, remains authoritative for the Latin text ... Smith, on the other hand, being one of the world's eminent metallurgists, approaches the text less in terms of philology than as one who shares Theophilus's own technical concerns."[15]

Following a student sit-in in 1969, Hawthorne called the Chicago Tribune to laud the university's "pioneering" approach.[16] As he said, "[t]he sit-in at Chicago is now over, without bloodshed, beatings, or other violent acts ... Where other colleges here and abroad have called in the police, the national guard, the military, this university, dedicated as it is to the solution of problems by intellectual, reasoning, and patient 'confrontation' of human minds has arrived at a decent, fair, and honorable solution of this crisis."[16]

Hawthorne became a United States citizen in 1952.[2] He was the husband of Dolores Hawthorne (née Bandini),[1][17] a Stanford-educated physicist descended from an early California family;[18][19] she was a post-doctoral research fellow of Edward Teller and had been invited by J. Robert Oppenheimer to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory while the Manhattan Project was underway, but left academia after giving birth.[20] The couple married on 7 July 1948 in Florence, Italy,[18][21] and had two children, John Elliott and Margaret Deirdre "Nini" Hawthorne.[1][22] He died on 8 March 1977 at the age of 61, following a six-month stay at Billings Hospital.[1][2][23] His son, a Duke University forestry graduate, died the following year in a climbing accident in Oregon.[24][25][26]

The John G. Hawthorne Travel Prize in Classical Studies at the University of Chicago is named after Hawthorne.[27] It is awarded to "an outstanding undergraduate student of classical languages, literature, or civilization for travel to Greece or Italy or for study of classical materials in other countries".[27]

Among Hawthorne's publications were many on ancient Greek literature and translations.[1] He also edited two documentaries about Greek archaeological excavations.[1]

• Hawthorne, John G. (8 June 1949). Gorgias of Leontini: A Critical Appraisal with Translation and Commentary of the Extant Fragments (Ph.D.). University of Chicago. ProQuest 301854564.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Hawthorne, John G. (November 1951). "The Delight of Latin". The Classical Journal. Classical Association of the Middle West and South. 47 (2): 75–77, 98. JSTOR 3293541.
• Hawthorne, John G. (1958). "The Myth of Palaemon". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. American Philosophical Society. LXXXIX: 92–98. JSTOR 283668.
• Hawthorne, John G. (April 1959). "The Agamemnon of Aeschylus: A Lecture in a General Education Course in the Humanities". The Journal of General Education. XII (2): 104–112. JSTOR 27795630.
• Smith, Cyril Stanley & Hawthorne, John G. (1974). "Mappae Clavicula: A Little Key to the World of Medieval Techniques". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. American Philosophical Society. 64 (4): 1–128. JSTOR 1006317.
• Hawthorne, John G. & Smith, Cyril Stanley (1979). Theophilus: On Divers Arts (2nd ed.). New York: Dover. ISBN 0-486-23784-2.

• White Jr., Lynn Townsend (Spring 1964). "Theophilus Redivivus". Technology and Culture. The Johns Hopkins University Press. V (2): 224–233. doi:10.2307/3101163. JSTOR 3101163.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Republished as White Jr., Lynn Townsend (1978). "Theophilus Redivivus". Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected Essays. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 93–103. ISBN 0-520-03566-6.

• John G. Hawthorne papers held by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens