B.L. Ullman

B. L. Ullman (1882-1965) received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1908, served as head of the Department of Latin of the University of Pittsburgh 1909-19, head of Classics at the State University of Iowa 1919-25, and professor of Latin at the University of Chicago from 1926 to 1944, before accepting an appointment as Kenan professor and head of Classics at The University of North Carolina in 1944. His extraordinary energy was legendary, and permitted him to combine scholarly interests in palaeography (sparked by his early work with Hale in Chicago and Ludwig Traube in Munich), medieval and renaissance literature, the transmission of the classics in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and Latin poetry on the one hand with, on the other, publication of a popular series of elementary Latin textbooks. He served as president of CAMWS in 1923-24, president of the American Philological Association in 1935, and president of the American Classical League from 1937 to 1947. His presidency and hard work on behalf of the ACL was clear evidence of his commitment not only to scholarship but to the teaching of Latin at all levels, including high school. Ullman was a fellow of the Medieval Academy (president of the Fellows, 1957-60) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His pedagogical activity included the three books of his Latin for Americans (with N. E. Henry and others, frequently revised and still in print) and many other books and articles. His scholarly books include Sicconis Polentonis Scriptorum Illustrium Latinae Linguae Libri XVIII (1928), Ancient Writing and its Influence (1932), Coluccii Salutati De Laboribus Herculis (2 vols., 1951), Studies in the Italian Renaissance (1955), Colucii Salutati De seculo et religione (1957), The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script (1960), and The Public Library of Renaissance Florence (1972, with P. A. Stadter).

For  biographical sketches and bibliographies, see L. B. Lawler, D. M. Robathan, and W. C. Korfmacher (eds.), Studies in Honor of Ullman presented to him on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday (1960), C. Henderson, Jr. (ed.), Classical, mediaeval, and Renaissance studies in honor of Berthold Louis Ullman (2 vols, 1964), and his obituary in the New York Times, June 27, 1965, p. 64.