Principal R. M. Burrows

Abstract

KING'S COLLEGEand the whole University of London have suffered grievous loss by the death of Dr. Ronald Burrows. Born on August 16, 1867, Dr. Burrows went from Charterhouse to Christ Church, Oxford, Literae Humaniores. After five years as assistant to Prof. Gilbert Murray, who then held the Greek chair at Glasgow,he was appointed professor of Greek at Cardiff in 1898, and rejoined his Cardiff colleague, Dr. R. S. Conway, as Greek professor in Manchester in 1908. By travel, during these years, in the Medi-terranean, he had gained valuable experience of topography and excavation, and also that first hand knowledge of the modern politics of Greece and the Balkan States which served him so well in later years. His published work, mainly about Greek battlefields, ancient sites in Bceotia (where he conducted most instructive excavations at Rhitsona and the Delion), and the newly revealed Minoan civilisation, gained him the degree of D. Litt. in the University of Oxford in 1910, and his “Discoveries in Crete,” published in 1907,went into a third edition. An excellent scholar, a vigorous and fluent writer, and a teacher of untiring drive and wide humanity, Dr. Burrows contributed much to “save Greek “during a difficult period by the simple and characteristic method of making his pupils interested in it, and infecting them with his own keenness; and this did not stop “out of school.” His lifelong interest in young lads, and his strenuous and successful work for the Cardiff University Settlement and for the Ardwick Lads' Club at Manchester, were for him all of a piece with the “humanities “of which his Greek studies should be the crown. He enjoyed life and enjoyed people, and his sunny temper and good fellowship were the happy counterpart of his learning and judgment.