John Chadwick was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
linguistLinguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and
classicalClassics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
scholar most famous for his role in deciphering
Linear BLinear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...
, along with
Michael VentrisMichael George Francis Ventris, OBE was an English architect and classical scholar who, along with John Chadwick, was responsible for the decipherment of Linear B.Ventris was educated in Switzerland and at Stowe School...
.
Early life and education
He was born in
East SheenEast Sheen, also known as 'Sheen', is an affluent suburb of London, England in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. It forms part of the London post town in the SW postcode area....
, Richmond-upon-Thames, and educated at St Paul's School and
Corpus Christi College, CambridgeCorpus Christi College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is notable as the only college founded by Cambridge townspeople: it was established in 1352 by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary...
, and he served as an officer the
Royal NavyThe Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
's Special Branch during the Second World War. In 1942 he was transferred to intelligence duties in
Alexandria, EgyptAlexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
, and worked on breaking lower-level Italian naval codes. In 1944 he was again transferred to
Bletchley ParkBletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
(“Station X”), learned Japanese, and worked on reading the encoded messages sent by the Japanese naval representatives in
StockholmStockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
and
BerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
After the end of the war in 1945, he returned to his studies at Cambridge, graduating with First Class Honours in Classics Part II, with a distinction in his special subject Linguistics.
While a studying at Corpus Christi College, he attempted, with some of his fellow students, to use cryptographic methods to the “Minoan Linear Script B”. They were already aware at the time of the work of
Michael VentrisMichael George Francis Ventris, OBE was an English architect and classical scholar who, along with John Chadwick, was responsible for the decipherment of Linear B.Ventris was educated in Switzerland and at Stowe School...
. They stopped working actively on the problem due to a lack of published data from inscriptions.
In 1950 he published his first scholarly work, an edition of
The Medical Works of Hippocrates, co-authored with his cousin, William Neville Mann, a distinguished physician.
After finishing his degree, he had joined the staff of the
Oxford Latin DictionaryThe Oxford Latin Dictionary is the standard lexicon of Classical Latin, completed in 1982.The dictionary professes to be "independent alike of Lewis & Short on the one hand and of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae on the other." It "is based on an entirely fresh reading of the Latin sources...
before beginning a Classics lectureship at Cambridge in 1952. That year he began working with Ventris on the progressive decipherment of Linear B, the two writing
Documents in Mycenean Greek in 1956 following a controversial first paper three years earlier. Chadwick's
philologicalPhilology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
ideas were applied to Ventris' initial theory that Linear B was an early form of Greek rather than another Mediterranean language.
After Ventris' death Chadwick became the figurehead of the Linear B work, writing the accessible popular book
The Decipherment of Linear B in 1958 and revising
Documents in Mycenean Greek in 1978.
He retired in 1984, by which time he had become the fourth (and last)
Perceval Maitland LaurenceSir Perceval Maitland Laurence was an English classical scholar, judge in South Africa and a benefactor of the University of Cambridge.-Early life and education:...
Reader in Classics at Cambridge. He continued his scholarship until his death, being an active member of several international societies and writing numerous popular and academic articles. He was also a Fellow of the
British AcademyThe British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
and of
Downing College, CambridgeDowning College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1800 and currently has around 650 students.- History :...
.
Publications
- Ventris, Michael
Michael George Francis Ventris, OBE was an English architect and classical scholar who, along with John Chadwick, was responsible for the decipherment of Linear B.Ventris was educated in Switzerland and at Stowe School...
; Chadwick, John (1953) "Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives", The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 73, (1953), pp. 84–103.