David Ellis Evans FBA (23 September 1930 – 26 September 2013) was a

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...

scholar and academic. He was born in the Tywy Valley in

Carmarthenshire Carmarthenshire ( cy, Sir Gaerfyrddin; or informally ') is a county in the south-west of Wales. The three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. Carmarthen is the county town and administrative centre. The county is known as ...

and went to

Llandeilo Llandeilo () is a town and community in Carmarthenshire, Wales, situated at the crossing of the River Towy by the A483 on a 19th-century stone bridge. Its population was 1,795 at the 2011 Census. It is adjacent to the westernmost point of the ...

Grammar School. After studying at

Jesus College, Oxford Jesus College (in full: Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship ...

and receiving a doctorate from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, he lectured at the University of Wales, Swansea from 1957 to 1978, rising to become Professor. In 1978, he returned to Oxford University as

Jesus Professor of Celtic The Jesus Chair of Celtic is a professorship in Celtic studies at the University of Oxford within the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages. The holder is also a Professorial Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. Just six people have held the chair ...

and also became a Professorial Fellow of Jesus College. He was appointed as a Fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars s ...

in 1983, having delivered the Academy's

Sir John Rhys ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as p ...

Memorial Lecture in 1977, named in honour of the first Oxford Celtic Professor. He retired in 1996. His particular research interest was early

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foo ...

culture throughout Europe, dealing with its relationship with that of the classical world, and in the history of the Celtic languages and the early literatures of Wales and Ireland. A volume of essays on these topics by fellow Celticists was published in honour of his 65th birthday in 1995.Essays in honour of Professor D. Ellis Evans on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday (University of Wales Press website) (Retrieved 18 February 2007
)

References

1930 births Academics of Swansea University Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford Celtic studies scholars Welsh scholars and academics 2013 deaths Fellows of the British Academy Jesus Professors of Celtic People from Llandeilo {{Wales-academic-bio-stub