John Chedvik
Great Britain- Biography of John Chadwick
- Collaboration with Michael Ventris
- Contributions to the Decipherment
- Publications
Biography of John Chadwick
John Chadwick was a British linguist and expert in the ancient Greek language. He was born in the United States and received his education at St. Christopher School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. During World War II, Chadwick served as an officer in the Royal Navy. After the war, he became a member of the editorial board of the Oxford Classical Dictionary before joining the faculty at Cambridge in 1952.
Collaboration with Michael Ventris
In the same year, Chadwick heard a radio broadcast in which Michael Ventris presented the preliminary results of his decipherment of Linear B, an ancient script from Crete. Ventris concluded that the inscriptions could represent an early form of the Greek language, but he lacked sufficient knowledge of ancient Greek and sought help from professionals. Chadwick contacted Ventris on the same day and became involved in the decipherment project.
Contributions to the Decipherment
Chadwick's contribution to the decipherment of Linear B was the reconstruction of the grammar (morphology and phonetics) of the Mycenaean dialect of the ancient Greek language. This allowed for a more precise reading of various signs. He continued the work on decipherment after Ventris' death in 1956. The results were published in the books "Documents in Mycenaean Greek" (1956), "The Decipherment of Linear B" (1958), and "Documents in Mycenaean Greek" (1978). Chadwick retired in 1984 but continued his scholarly activities until his death.
Publications
- "The Decipherment of Linear B" - Second edition (1990)
- "Documents in Mycenaean Greek" - Second edition (1974)
Chadwick's work has also been translated into Russian in the collection "The Secrets of Ancient Scripts: Problems of Decipherment" (1976).
