Roland Grubb Kent


Roland Grubb Kent was an American educator and a founder of the Linguistic Society of America. He was the first person to translate Marcus Terentius Varro's De Lingua Latina into English.
Ken's 1903 doctoral thesis on the history of Thessaly traces the history of the country with particular attention to the times between 600 and 300 BC. Unfortunately, only Chapter V and two appendices were published, and the bulk of his dissertation is currently lost. His Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon is one of the seminal works on the subject.

Biography

Kent was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1877 to Lindley Coates Kent and Anna Grubb Kent. Lindley Ken was a decorated American Civil War officer and owner of a successful Wilmington lumber business. Anna Kent was a descendant of John Grubb, the early Delaware settler.
After receiving his M.A. from Swarthmore College in 1898, Roland Kent continued his classical education at Berlin and Munich universities before completing his studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1903, Roland obtained his Ph.D. with a thesis on the history of Thessaly.
Kent was appointed Instructor in Greek language and Latin at the University of Pennsylvania in 1904, where he taught for the rest of his career. In 1909 he became Assistant Professor of comparative philology, and he was promoted to full professor in 1916; from 1942 to his retirement in 1947 his title was Professor of Indo-European linguistics.
Kent was a founder of the LSA and served as treasurer from 1924 to 1942. He was elected as president of the LSA for 1941.

Major works by Roland Kent