Thomas Oden Lambdin (October 31, 1927 – May 8, 2020) was an American linguist and scholar of the Semitic and

Egyptian ''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...

languages. He received his Ph.D. in 1952 from the

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

Department of Near Eastern Studies, where his advisor was William Foxwell Albright; his dissertation was on "Egyptian Loanwords and Transcriptions in the Ancient Semitic Languages." He was appointed as an associate professor of Semitic Languages at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1964. He retired from Harvard in 1983 and served as Professor Emeritus until his death. He was admired not only for his research and his "tireless teaching", but for the quality of his introductory textbooks on

Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...

, Coptic, Ge'ez and

Gothic language Gothic is an extinct language, extinct East Germanic languages, East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the ''Codex Argenteus'', a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only Ea ...

. His ''Festschrift'', ''Working with No Data: Semitic and Egyptian Studies Presented to Thomas O. Lambdin'' (ed. David M. Golomb and Susan T. Hollis; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1987) includes a full bibliography of his publications, as well as chapters by John Huehnergard and Richard J. Clifford about their experiences as his students.

Works

* * * * *

References

* Linguists from the United States Harvard University faculty 2020 deaths 1927 births Linguists of Hebrew Coptologists {{US-linguist-stub