William Watson Goodwin
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William Watson Goodwin (May 9, 1831June 15, 1912) was an American classical scholar, for many years Eliot professor of Greek at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
.


Biography

He was born in
Concord, Massachusetts Concord () is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. At the 2020 census, the town population was 18,491. The United States Census Bureau considers Concord part of Greater Boston. The town center is near where the conflu ...
, the son of Hersey Bradford Goodwin and Lucrettia Watson. He graduated at Harvard in 1851, studied at Bonn, Berlin, and
Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
, receiving a
Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
from the latter institution in 1855. He was tutor in
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
at Harvard from 1856 to 1860, and Eliot professor of Greek there from 1860 until his resignation in 1901. He became an overseer of Harvard in 1903. In 1882–1883 Goodwin was the first director of the
American School of Classical Studies , native_name_lang = Greek , image = American School of Classical Studies at Athens.jpg , image_size = , image_alt = , caption = The ASCSA main building as seen from Mount Lykavittos , latin_name = , other_name = , former_name = , mo ...
at
Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
. He was president of the American Philological Association in 1872 and again in 1885. He was also a member of the Imperial Archaeological Institute of
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
, and of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and was a knight of the Greek Order of the Saviour. He was elected a member of the
American Antiquarian Society The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society in ...
in 1893. Goodwin edited the ''Panegyricus'' of
Isocrates Isocrates (; grc, Ἰσοκράτης ; 436–338 BC) was an ancient Greek rhetorician, one of the ten Attic orators. Among the most influential Greek rhetoricians of his time, Isocrates made many contributions to rhetoric and education throu ...
(1864) and
Demosthenes Demosthenes (; el, Δημοσθένης, translit=Dēmosthénēs; ; 384 – 12 October 322 BC) was a Greek statesman and orator in ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prow ...
' ''On The Crown'' (1901); and assisted in preparing the seventh edition of Liddell and Scott's '' Greek-English Lexicon''. He revised an English version by several writers of
Plutarch Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''P ...
's ''Morals'' (5 vols, 1871; 6th ed., 1889), and published the Greek text with literal English version of
Aeschylus Aeschylus (, ; grc-gre, Αἰσχύλος ; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek ...
' ''Agamemnon'' (1906) for the Harvard production of that play in June 1906. As a teacher he did much to raise the tone of classical reading from that of a mechanical exercise to literary study. But his most important work was his ''Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb'' (1860), of which the seventh revised edition appeared in 1877 and another (enlarged) in 1890. This was "based in part on Madvig and Krüger," but, besides making accessible to American students the works of these continental grammarians, it presented original matter, including a "radical innovation in the classification of conditional sentences," notably the "distinction between particular and general suppositions." Goodwin's ''Greek Grammar'' (elementary edition, 1870;.enlarged 1879; revised and enlarged 1892) gradually superseded in most American schools the ''Grammar'' of Hadley and Allen. Both the ''Moods and Tenses'' and the ''Grammar'' in later editions are largely dependent on the theories of Gildersleeve for additions and changes. Goodwin also wrote a few elaborate syntactical studies, to be found in ''Harvard Studies in Classical Philology'', the twelfth volume of which was dedicated to him upon the completion of fifty years as an alumnus of Harvard and forty-one years as Eliot professor. William Watson Goodwin died at his home in
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
on June 15, 1912.


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External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Goodwin, William Watson 1831 births 1912 deaths American classical scholars Classical scholars of Harvard University Harvard University alumni University of Göttingen alumni People from Concord, Massachusetts Classical philologists Scholars of ancient Greek literature Members of the American Antiquarian Society