On March 26

On this day in ...
... 1913, in Chartres, France, a daughter, Jacqueline, was born to a novelist and her husband, a philosophy professor, who was killed in World War I combat the next year. As a school girl Jacqueline was a top student in Latin and ancient Greek, eventually studying the latter at École Normale Supérieure. Her 1940 marriage would end in divorce; she would be forced out of a teaching job and into hiding because of her Jewish heritage. After World War II, however, Dr. Jacqueline de Romilly (above left) would become a champion of the humanities, "one of France’s leading scholars of Greek civilization and language and only the second woman to be elected to the Académie Française." In 1973, de Romilly became the 1st woman professor at the Collège de France, the prestigious institution now home to IntLawGrrls ' guest/alumna Mireille Delmas-Marty. Professor de Romilly died, at age 97, in December of last year.

(Prior March 26 posts are here, here, here, and here.)
 
Bloggers Team