Content area
Full Text
Calvert Watkins, Distinguished Professor in Residence of the Department of Classics and Program in Indo- European Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, died during the night of March 20, 2013, at his home in Los Angeles. Having suffered from ill health for several months, he appeared to be on his way to recovery at the time of his death. He was born in Pittsburgh, March 13, 1933, son of Ralph James and Willye (Ward) Watkins. Both his father, an economist who held a number of advisory positions with the United States government, and his mother were born in San Marcos, Texas, where Calvert also spent several years of his childhood and which he called home.
Calvert Watkins received both his A.B. degree and his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Harvard University in 1954 and 1959 respectively. Also formational for his academic career were his studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris 1954-55 and 1958 and at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies 1957-58. A junior fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard 1956-59, he was appointed instructor there in 1959, assistant professor in 1960, associate professor (with tenure) in 1962, and full professor in 1966. In 1989 he was appointed the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Linguistics and the Classics at Harvard, retiring in 2003 to join his wife Stephanie Jamison, Professor of Indo-Iranian Languages and Cultures, at the University of California, Los Angeles. During his long tenure at Harvard, he served as Chair of the Department of Linguistics for eleven years, most recently 1985-91.
He taught at three Summer Institutes of the Linguistic Society of America, including that of 1979 at the University of Salzburg, where he was the Hermann and Clara Collitz Professor, and held visiting positions at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (twice), Stanford University, and the École Normale Supérieure and Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle.
He was an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy (1968), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1973), a Member of the American Philosophical Society (1975), a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (1987), and of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Correspondant Etranger (1990), Associé Etranger, Membre de l'Institut (1999). He received a...