Eric P. Hamp, renowned linguist of lesser-known languages, 1920-2019

During his 41-year career at the University of Chicago, Prof. Emeritus Eric P. Hamp became one of the world's foremost scholars of Indo-European linguistics. Not only did he base much of his scholarship on lesser-known languages and dialects, including Albanian, Breton, Quileute, Ojibwa, Arvanitika, Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, his UChicago colleagues said he rescued many of the most obscure ones. Hamp, who passed away on Feb. 17 at age 98, compared modern languages to reconstruct how our common ancestors spoke thousands of years ago-long before language was recorded. He wrote and edited more than 3,500 articles and reviews in scholarly journals, ranging from topics in linguistics, anthropology and braille reading. Among academics, he was known for writing short papers of two to four pages, which colleagues say were incisive, brilliant and concise. He continued to impact his field even after his retirement in 1991-conducting research, writing papers and presenting his work at conferences.