Robert J. Getty

Robert J. Getty (1908-1963) was born in Northern Ireland, received an AB from Queens University, Belfast, in 1928, then, after two years at St. John’s College, a Cambridge master’s degree in 1930. After short stints at the Universities of Aberdeen and of Liverpool, he returned to St. John’s as a fellow and lecturer in Classics (1937-47, with an interruption for government service during the war). He was appointed professor of Latin at the University of Toronto in 1947, then professor of Classics and head (1951-58). In 1958 he accepted an appointment as the first Paddison Professor of Latin at UNC, becoming chairman of the department in the following year. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and president of the American Philological Association (1959). His edition of Lucan, De bello civili Book I (1940), exemplifies the modesty and erudition for which he was famous.