Francisco Rodríguez Adrados (29 March 192221 July 2020) was a Spanish

Hellenist Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

, linguist and translator. He worked most of his career at the

Complutense University of Madrid The Complutense University of Madrid ( es, Universidad Complutense de Madrid; UCM, links=no, ''Universidad de Madrid'', ''Universidad Central de Madrid''; la, Universitas Complutensis Matritensis, links=no) is a public research university loc ...

. He was a member of the Real Academia Española and Real Academia de la Historia.

Life

Rodríguez Adrados was born on 29 March 1922 in

Salamanca Salamanca () is a city in western Spain and is the capital of the Province of Salamanca in the autonomous community of Castile and León. The city lies on several rolling hills by the Tormes River. Its Old City was declared a UNESCO World Herit ...

. He studied classical philology at the

University of Salamanca The University of Salamanca ( es, Universidad de Salamanca) is a Spanish higher education institution, located in the city of Salamanca, in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It was founded in 1218 by King Alfonso IX. It is t ...

, where he obtained a degree in 1944. He later obtained a doctorate in classical philology from the

. Rodríguez Adrados became a teacher of Greek at the Instituto Cardenal Cisneros in Madrid in 1949. Two years later, he became a professor at the

University of Barcelona The University of Barcelona ( ca, Universitat de Barcelona, UB; ; es, link=no, Universidad de Barcelona) is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, in Spain. With 63,000 students, it is one of the biggest universities i ...

and the next year, he moved to the Complutense University of Madrid, where he worked until his retirement. He worked as a translator of

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

texts. He was considered to be an expert on Ancient Greek. Rodríguez Adrados died on 21 July 2020 in Madrid, aged 98.

Awards and honors

For his work on the '' Diccionario Griego-Español'', Rodríguez Adrados received the Prize of the

Aristotle Onassis Aristotle Socrates Onassis (, ; el, Αριστοτέλης Ωνάσης, Aristotélis Onásis, ; 20 January 1906 – 15 March 1975), was a Greek-Argentinian shipping magnate who amassed the world's largest privately-owned shipping fleet and wa ...

Foundation in 1989. He was elected to Seat ''d'' of the Real Academia Española on 21 June 1990, he took up his seat on 28 April 1991. Four years later he became a corresponding member of the

Academia Argentina de Letras The ''Academia Argentina de Letras'' is the academy in charge of studying and prescribing the use of the Spanish language in Argentina. Since its establishment, on August 13, 1931, it has maintained ties with the Royal Spanish Academy and the othe ...

. He was elected a foreign member of the Academy of Athens in 2003. Rodríguez Adrados was elected to ''medalla nº 3'' of the Real Academia de la Historia on 23 May 2003 and took up his seat on 22 February 2004. In 2012, he won the Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas. In 2014, he was awarded an honorary degree by the

University of Panama The University of Panama ( es, Universidad de Panamá) was founded on October 7, 1935. Initially, it had 175 students learning education, commerce, natural sciences, pharmacy, pre-engineering or law. , it had 74,059 students distributed in 228 b ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodriguez Adrados, Francisco 1922 births 2020 deaths Complutense University of Madrid alumni Academic staff of the Complutense University of Madrid Foreign Members of the Academy of Athens (modern) Hellenists Linguists from Spain Members of the Real Academia de la Historia Members of the Royal Spanish Academy People from Salamanca Scholars of Ancient Greek Spanish translators Academic staff of the University of Barcelona University of Salamanca alumni 20th-century Spanish historians 21st-century Spanish historians 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists Spanish classical scholars