Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Whitney, William Dwight

WHITNEY, WILLIAM DWIGHT, an American educator; born in Northampton, Mass., Feb. 9, 1827; was graduated at Williams College in 1845; spent some vears abroad in study; in 1854 was made Professor of Sanskrit at Yale, in 1870 of comparative philology, holding both positions till death. His writings are authority on all philological questions, and his rank as a Sanskrit scholar is of the first order. From 1849 he was a member of the American Oriental Society, and its president from 1884. His contributions to the &ldquo;North American Review,&rdquo; the &ldquo;New Englander,&rdquo; and other periodicals, were numerous and varied. His earliest work was the preparation, in company with Rudolf Roth of Tübingen, of an edition of the

&ldquo;Atharva Veda Sanhita&rdquo; (Berlin, 1856). Among his other works are: &ldquo;Language and the Study of Language&rdquo; (1867); &ldquo;On Material and Form in Language&rdquo; (1872); &ldquo;Darwinism and Language&rdquo; (1874); &ldquo;Logical Consistency in Views of Language&rdquo; (1880); &ldquo;Mixture in Language&rdquo;(1881); &ldquo;The Study of Hindoo Grammar and the Study of Sanskrit&rdquo; (1884); &ldquo;The Upanishads and their Latest Translation&rdquo; (1886). He has also written &ldquo;Compendious German Grammar&rdquo; (1869); &ldquo;German Reader in Prose and Verse&rdquo; (1870); &ldquo;Essentials of English Grammar&rdquo; (1877); &ldquo;Sanskrit Grammar&rdquo; (1877); and &ldquo;Practical French Grammar&rdquo; (1886). Professor Whitney was the superintending editor of the &ldquo;Century Dictionary&rdquo; (1889-1891), and assisted in the preparation of &ldquo;Webster's Dictionary&rdquo; (1864). He died in New Haven, Conn., June 9, 1894.