Kirk, G. S. 1921-2003

Geoffrey Stephen Kirk, ((1921-12-03)3 December 1921 – (2003-03-10)10 March 2003) was a British classicist who served as the 35th Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge. He published widely on pre-Socratic philosophy and the work of the Greek poet Homer, culminating in a six-volume philological commentary on the Iliad published between 1985 and 1993. Born into a middle-class family in Nottingham, he began studying classics at Clare College, Cambridge but joined the Royal Navy during World War II. He was deployed to the Aegean Sea as part of the Levant Schooner Flotilla and distinguished himself through his command of modern Greek. His service, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, became the basis for his 1997 memoir Towards The Aegean Sea. Kirk began his career as a lecturer and fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge in the 1950s. He also held professorships at Yale and Bristol University. In 1974, having gained a reputation as a leading Hellenist through the publication of his first major study (Heraclitus: the Cosmic Fragments, 1954), he succeeded Denys Page as the Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. After his retirement in 1983, he dedicated himself to his Iliad commentary but began to suffer from depressive illness.