John Chadwick (diplomat)

John Chadwick, (21 May 1920 – 24 November 1998) was an English linguist and classical scholar who was most notable for the decipherment, with Michael Ventris, of Linear B.

Early life, education and wartime service

John Chadwick was born at 18 Christ Church Road, Mortlake, Surrey, on 21 May 1920, the younger son of Margaret Pamela (''née'' Bray) and Fred Chadwick, civil servant. He was educated at St Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Chadwick volunteered for the Royal Navy in 1940 after completing the first year of his classics course at Cambridge. At first he served in the Mediterranean as an ordinary seaman aboard the light cruiser HMS Coventry and saw action when his ship was torpedoed by an Italian submarine and dive-bombed. In 1942 he was sent ashore at Alexandria for an interview by the Chief of Naval Intelligence and was immediately assigned to intelligence duties in Egypt and promoted to Temporary Sub Lieutenant in the RNVR. Thereafter he worked on Italian codes."John Chadwick, 1920–1998"
''The Guardian'', 1998-12-03, page 22."Life of John Chadwick : 1920 – 1998 : Classical Philologist, Lexicographer and Co-decipherer of Linear B"
, Faculty of Classics, Cambridge University Chadwick deduced from some R/T traffic meant to be handled at Bletchley Park that a British submarine had been sunk near Taranto.

In 1944, he was transferred to Bletchley Park ("Station X"), learned Japanese, and worked on reading the encoded messages sent by the Japanese naval representatives in Stockholm and Berlin.

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 studying at Corpus Christi College, he attempted, with some of his fellow students, to use cryptographic methods to decipher the "Minoan Linear Script B". They were already aware at the time of the work of Michael Ventris. They stopped working actively on the problem owing to a lack of published data from inscriptions.

Career

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 joined the staff of the ''Oxford Latin Dictionary'' before beginning a Classics lectureship at Cambridge in 1952. In July that year he heard a radio broadcast by Michael Ventris about his work on Linear B and offered his help as "a mere philologist". The men began to collaborate on the progressive decipherment of Linear B, writing ''Documents in Mycenean Greek'' in 1956, following a controversial first paper three years earlier. Chadwick's philological ideas were applied to Ventris's initial theory that Linear B was an early form of Greek rather than another Mediterranean language.

After Ventris's death, Chadwick became the figurehead of the Linear B work, writing the accessible and popular book ''The Decipherment of Linear B'' in 1958 and revising ''Documents in Mycenaean Greek'' in 1978.

He retired in 1984, by which time he had become the fourth (and last) Perceval Maitland Laurence 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 Academy and of Downing College, Cambridge.

Family

Chadwick married Joan Hill in 1947. They had one son, Camden Chadwick.

Publications

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Decorations and awards

* 1992: Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
* 1997: International Antonio Feltrinelli Prize

See also

* Mycenaean Greek, Mycenaean Greece
* Michael Ventris

Further reading

Obituaries of Chadwick

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chadwick, John
1920 births
1998 deaths
People from East Sheen
Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
English classical scholars
Linguists from England
English archaeologists
English philologists
People educated at St Paul's School, London
Bletchley Park people
Scholars of Mycenaean Greek
Hellenic epigraphers
Place of death missing
Fellows of Downing College, Cambridge
Fellows of the British Academy
Recipients of the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
Classical philologists
Members of the University of Cambridge faculty of classics
Royal Navy officers of World War II
Contributors to the Oxford Classical Dictionary
Linear B