• Date of Birth: August 8, 1946
  • Born City: New York
  • Born State/Country: NY
  • Parents: Bernard & Annie W.
  • Date of Death: February 7, 1989
  • Death City: Chicago
  • Death State/Country: IL
  • Married: Susan Marie Kastendiek
  • Education:

    A.B. U. of Chicago, 1967; M.A., Ph.D., Yale, 1974

  • Dissertation:

    “The Relief Odes of Euripides” (Yale, 1974).

  • Professional Experience:

    Asst. prof. U. of Chicago, 1971-89; Chair, Dept. of Classical Languages and Literatures, 1988-9.

  • Publications:

    Iphigenia in Aulis, Third Stasimon,” CP 69 (1974) 241-8; “The First Stasimon of Euripides' Electra,” YCS 25 (1977) 277-89; “The Rhetoric of Birthright and Race in Euripides' Ion,” Hermes 106 (1978) 301-15; “Public and Private in Three Plays of Euripides,” CP 74 (1979) 294-309; The Varieties of Enchantment. Early Greek Views of the Nature and Function of Poetry, (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1984) REVS: Mnemosyne 39 (1986) 419-22 de Jong | AncPhil 6 (1986) 199-201 Gerber | JHS 105 (1985) 198-9 Harriott | CR 35 (1985) 380-1 Lloyd | Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (1985) 378-9 Murphy | TLS 83 (1984) 886 Padel | G&R 22 (1985) 84 Parker | WS n.f. 19 (1985) 242 Schwabl | CW 79 (1985) 56-7 Thalmann | REG 97 (1984) 565 Vernière; “Seeing and Feeling. Representation in Two Poems of Theocritus,” CP 80 (1985) 1-19; “Philodemus on the Terminology of Neoptolemus,” Mnemosyne 40 (1987) 56-68; “The Voices of Epitaph and Alexandrian Poetics,” AbstrAPA (1988) 118; “Sublime Method. Longinus on Language and Imitation,” ClasAnt 7 (1988) 252-69; “Surprised by Self: Audible Thought in Hellenistic Poetry,” CP 85 (1990) 1-21; “Callimachean Passages: the Rhetoric of Epitaph in Epigram,” Arethusa 24 (1991) 77-105. 

  • Notes:

    George Walsh was a pioneer in the use of computers in the study of classical languages. In 1984 he invented the GreekKeys program, a means of mapping a polytonic Greek alphabet onto a Roman keyboard on Macintosh computers that soon became standard for all classicists. At the time of his death he was working with Gregory Crane to develop a Greek literature database of texts, dictionaries and art that became the Perseus Project. 

    His early work on Euripides arose out his dissertation topic, but he turned to the rhetoric of Hellenistic epitaphs and the influence of the personal vision on Callimachus and Theocritus. He was investigating literary theory in Longinus and Philodemus before his untimely death from cancer at the age of 42.  

  • Sources:

    New York Times (11 February 1989) 33; Chicago Tribune (9 February 1989) 

  • Author: Ward Briggs