Leonard Palmer

Education

He was educated at Cardiff High School, the University of South Wales, Trinity College Cambridge, and the University of Vienna.

Career

He was also a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. Palmer made some significant contributions to the study of Classical languages, and in the area of historical linguistics. He started his academic career in 1931, teaching classics at Manchester University.

During World World War II, Palmer worked at the Government Code and Cypher School (Government College&CS) at Bletchley Park, at the so-called Hut 4.

Their work was the translation, interpretation and distribution of enemy messages. A strong focus of Palmer"s work was the Greek linguistics, and in particular the language and dating of the Mycenaean Linear B tablets.

He also researched the pre-Greek languages in the Aegean Sea area, their origin and chronology. Palmer also wrote a widely translated and reprinted textbook on Latin language.

Palmer played a role in the controversies over the dating of archaeological finds from Minoan Crete, where he disagreed with the excavator, Sir Arthur Evans, and favoured a later date.

In his book "Descriptive & Comparative Linguistics" (1972), among other things, he took an issue with the Chomskian linguistics. Palmer was one of the linguists who were investigating the theories that some unknown language or languages were spoken in prehistoric Greece before the settlement of Proto-Greek speakers in the area. So this is the question of an ancient linguistic Pre-Greek substrate in Greece.

According to Palmer, this may have been one of the ancient Anatolian languages, perhaps a Luwian language.

He suggested that the language of Linear A might be Luwian on the basis of -ssand -nd- (corresponding to -ssand -nthin mainland Greece) placenames being widespread in Western Anatolia.

Achievements

• Palmer was elected Secretary and then President of the British Philological Society. He was also a corresponding member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. In 1981, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Innsbruck.

Membership

He was also a corresponding member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut.