IN MEMORIAM

Bryan Peter Reardon

 Professor of Classics

UC Irvine

1928 – 2009

 

Bryan Peter Reardon was born at Glasgow in 1928. After doing his undergraduate work at Glasgow and Cambridge he acquired the Ph. D. from the Université de Nantes. First holding positions at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University College of North Bangor, where he served as Head of Department, he was recruited by UC Irvine in 1978, with the understanding he would serve as Chair of the Department of Classics, a position he held until 1983. During that time he presided over a radical reorganization of the Department’s graduate program and did much to enrich and strengthen the Department in many respects and to increase its academic visibility and reputation. After his term of office, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Caen and spent a year as Visiting Professor at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. His final two years of active service as Director of the University’s Education Abroad Program Study Center at Lyon, France, and retired in 1994.

 

Bryan was universally regarded as a world-class expert on the Greek Novel, a subject on which he published copiously. His principal contributions were Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), The Form of Greek Romance (Princeton, 1991), and most recently a definitive edition of Chariton’s Chaireas and Callirhoe. He was a familiar figure at international conferences on the Novel and for many years edited the Petronian Society Newletter, a bibliographical resource and clearing-house of information for researchers in the field. His accomplishments were recognized by the award of the Medal of the Université de Paris - Sorbonne (1987), the U. C. I. Humanities Asssociates’ Faculty Teaching Award (1988). He was elected Honorary Chair of the second International Conference on the Ancient Novel (1989), and served on the editorial board of Classical Antiquity, the Classics journal of the University of California.

 

Bryan was a scholar of genuine international stature and was widely known and liked. He was a beloved figure to his colleagues and students, and a number of his former students are now enjoying successful academic careers. When he died at his home in Lion-sur-Mer, Normandy, on 16 November, 2009, his former colleagues and students, and many others throughout the world were deeply saddened.

 

Dana Sutton, Professor Emeritus,
Department Of Classics, University of California, Irvine