Presentation

Born in Chartres in 1913, Jacqueline de Romilly was the daughter of philosophy teacher Maxime David, killed in the war in 1914, and writer Jeanne Malvoisin. She studied in Paris at the Lycée Molière, Lycée Louis-le-Grand, E.N.S. rue d'Ulm and Sorbonne ; she won the Latin and Greek sections of the Concours Général in 1930, the first year in which girls were allowed to compete, and became agrégée des lettres in 1936 and docteur ès lettres in 1947.

After teaching Greek at a Versailles lycée and then at the Sorbonne, Jacqueline de Romilly was elected to the Collège de France on June 20, 1973, where she held the newly-created chair of Greece and the Formation of Moral and Political Thought until 1984. Jacqueline de Romilly thus became the first woman professor at the Collège de France to be appointed to a state chair. For eleven years, throughout her lectures at the Collège de France, she tackled Thucydides (an author she translated and commented on throughout her career), Homer and Plato, classical Greece always remaining at the heart of her interests.
In 1975, she became the first woman to be elected to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, and was elected to the Académie française in 1988. In 1995, she became a Greek citizen.

In addition to her fine translation of Thucydides for La Pléiade, her many other works include La Crainte et l'Angoisse dans le théâtre d'Eschyle (1958) ;La Loi dans la pensée grecque : des origines à Aristote (1971) ;La Douceur dans la pensée grecque (1979) ;" Patience mon cœur ! " L'essor de la psychologie dans la littérature grecque classique (1984) ;La Grèce antique à la découverte de la liberté (1989) ;Pourquoi la Grèce ? (1992) ;Problèmes de la démocratie grecque (2006).

Jacqueline de Romilly died onDecember 18 2010.

Learned societies and academies

  • 1961: corresponding member of the Academy of Denmark
  • 1967 : corresponding member of the British Academy
  • 1968 : corresponding member of the Vienna Academy
  • 1975 : corresponding member of the Academy of Athens
  • 1975 : member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres
  • 1976 : corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy
  • 1977 : corresponding member of the Netherlands Academy
  • 1988 : corresponding member of the Naples Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • 1989 : member of the Académie française
  • 1989 : Corresponding member of the Academy of Turin

Awards and distinctions

  • Honorary doctorate from the Universities of Oxford, Athens, Dublin, Heidelberg, Yale and Montreal
  • Honorary member of various learned societies in England, Greece, the United States..
  •  Humanism and Medicine " prize awarded by the International College of Vascular Pathology
  • 1981 : Recipient of the Österreichische Ehrenzelchen für Wissenschaft und Kunst (Vienna)
  • 1995 : 1995 Onassis Prize for Culture
  • March 2000 : Appointed Ambassador of Hellenism, designation made by Athens and subsequently communicated
  • May 2002 : Elevated to the dignity of Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit
  • September 2004 : Honorary diploma from the Centre d'études d'Ithaque

Chair