Jacqueline de Romilly

Jacqueline de Romilly
Born (1913-03-26)26 March 1913
Chartres, France
Died 18 December 2010(2010-12-18) (aged 97)
Boulogne-Billancourt, France
Nationality French
Education Lycée Louis-le-Grand
Alma mater École Normale Supérieure
University of Paris
Occupation Writer
Teacher
Known for Member of the Académie française

Jacqueline Worms de Romilly (French: [ʁɔmiji]; née David,[1] 26 March 1913 – 18 December 2010) was a Franco-Greek philologist, classical scholar and fiction writer. Because she was of Jewish ancestry, the Vichy government suspended her from her teaching duties during the Occupation of France.[2] She was the first woman nominated to the Collège de France, and in 1988, the second woman to enter the Académie française. She was also known for her work on the culture and language of ancient Greece, and in particular on Thucydides.

Biography

Born in Chartres, Eure-et-Loir, she studied at the Lycée Molière, where she won the Concours général in Latin and took second prize in Ancient Greek in 1930. She then prepared for the École Normale Supérieure at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. She entered the class of 1933 of the ENS Ulm. She passed the agrégation in Classics in 1936, and became a doctor of letters at the University of Paris in 1947.

After being a schoolteacher, she became a professor at Lille University and subsequently at the Sorbonne, between 1957 and 1973. She later was promoted to the chair of Greek and the development of moral and political thought at the Collège de France — the first woman nominated to this prestigious institution. In 1988, she was the second woman (after Marguerite Yourcenar) to enter the Académie française, being elected to Chair #7, which was previously occupied by André Roussin.

In 1995, she obtained Greek nationality and in 2000 was named as an Ambassador of Hellenism by the Greek government. A one-time president of the Association Guillaume Budé, she remained an honorary president until her death at a hospital in Boulogne-Billancourt at the age of 97.[3]

After having only received baptism in 1940, she fully converted to Maronite Catholicism in 2008, aged 95.[4][5]

Honours and awards

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 7/14/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.