William Hailey Willis (April 29, 1916,

Meridian, Mississippi Meridian is the List of municipalities in Mississippi, seventh largest city in the U.S. state of Mississippi, with a population of 41,148 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census and an estimated population in 2018 of 36,347. It is the count ...

– July 13, 2000,

Durham, North Carolina Durham ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Durham County, North Carolina, Durham County. Small portions of the city limits extend into Orange County, North Carolina, Orange County and Wake County, North Carol ...

) was an American classicist and a leading twentieth century papyrologist.

Early life

Willis was the son of William W. Willis and Clara B. (Hailey) Willis. He married Rachel E. (Hamilton) Willis on December 20, 1943, in Meridian, MS.

Scholarly career

Willis was educated at Mississippi College (B.A.),

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

(M.A.), and

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

(Ph.D.). Willis was a professor of Classics at the

University of Mississippi The University of Mississippi (byname Ole Miss) is a public research university that is located adjacent to Oxford, Mississippi, and has a medical center in Jackson. It is Mississippi's oldest public university and its largest by enrollment. ...

from 1946 until 1963, when he relocated to

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

. Willis' decision to change institutions in 1963 was related, in part, to the strife that surrounded racial integration at the

, a cause that he had both supported and advanced. In 1973 Willis served as president of the American Philological Association. He was awarded a

Guggenheim fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

1980 Events January * January 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission. * January 6 – Global Positioning System time epoch begins at 00:00 UTC. * January 9 – ...

. Willis' scholarly career included extensive work on papyrology and he published numerous papers dealing with ancient papyri. He was instrumental in building the papyrus collection now housed at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University and in advancing the efforts of the papyrus research center, then called the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, He was credited with producing an electronic edition of the Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri that was disseminated on

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

by the

Packard Humanities Institute The Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) is a non-profit foundation, established in 1987, and located in Los Altos, California, which funds projects in a wide range of conservation concerns in the fields of archaeology, music, film preservation, an ...

. At Duke Willis also served as editor of the journal ''Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies''.

Scholarship

*(with Klaus Maresch) 1988. “The Encounter of Alexander with the Brahmans: New Fragments of the Cynic Diatribe P.Genev.inv. 271,” ZPE 74:59–83. *1988. “Oxyrhynchite Documents among the Robinson Papyri,” ''BASP'' 25:99–127. *1990. “A New Fragment of the Bodmer Aspis,” ''Recherches et rencontres'' 2:167–171. *1990. “The Letter of Peter (1 Peter): Coptic text, translation, notes and variant readings,” in J. E. Goehring et al., ''The Crosby-Schøyen Codex (= CSCO 521, Subsidia 85 ouvain 1990'' 135–215. *1990. “The Robinson-Cologne Papyrus of Achilles Tatius,” ''GRBS'' 31:73–102. *1991. “Comoedia Dukiana,” ''GRBS'' 32:331–353. *(with Klaus Maresch) 1997. The Archive of Ammon Scholasticus of Panopolis: The Legacy of Harpocration(=Pap.Colon. 26.1 pladen 1997

Necrology

Notice published in ''Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies''

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Willis, William Hailey Classical scholars of the University of Mississippi Mississippi College alumni Columbia University alumni Yale University alumni 1916 births 2000 deaths American classical scholars