KIRK, G(eoffrey) S(tephen) 1921-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born December 3, 1921, in Nottingham, England; died March 10, 2003, in Rake, West Sussex, England. Educator and author. Kirk was a scholar of Greek who was a longtime professor at Cambridge University. He received his education at Clare College, Cambridge, attending classes only a year before joining the British Royal Navy. Because he had learned some modern Greek, he was sent to that country, where he helped with the Greek resistance against the Germans and received a Distinguished Service Cross. After the war, Kirk completed a master's degree at Cambridge in 1948 and a D.Litt. in 1965. His career as an educator began when he joined the Cambridge staff as a research fellow in 1946; he later became Regius Professor of Greek and fellow of Trinity College in 1974. This long association with Cambridge was interrupted by five years at Yale University from 1965 to 1970, and two years at the University of Bristol in the early 1970s. He retired from Cambridge as professor emeritus in 1982. During his career, Kirk edited and wrote a number of scholarly books on classic Greek literature, including Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments (1952), The Songs of Homer (1962), Homer and the Oral Tradition (1977), and two of the six volumes of The Iliad: A Commentary (1985, 1990), for which he was also the series' general editor. In 1997 he published his memoir of his early life in the Navy and Cambridge titled Toward the Aegean Sea.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Writers Directory, 18th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2003.

PERIODICALS

Independent (London, England), March 19, 2003, p. 20.

Times (London, England), March 24, 2003, p. 28.