Calvert Watkins

Calvert Watkins died in his sleep at the age of 80 in Los Angeles, California on March 20, 2013. He was the Distinguished Professor in Residence of the Department of Classics and the Program in Indo-European Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he had moved in 2003 after retiring from Harvard University as Victor S. Thomas Professor of Linguistics and the Classics.

Upon his retirement from Harvard in 2003, Watkins moved to Los Angeles, California and began teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles alongside his wife, Stephanie Jamison. Watkins continued to promote the importance of historical linguistics at UCLA by remaining active in the annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. In 2013, the 25th annual conference was dedicated to the memory of Watkins.

How to Kill a Dragon received favorable acclaim and is now considered to be a definitive text which transformed the study of Indo-European poetics. How to Kill a Dragon earned Watkins the 1998 Goodwin Award for Classical Studies.

How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics was published on November 16, 1995 through Oxford University Press and attempted to establish a formulaic method of comparative linguistics which exemplified the importance of the poetic formula in order to better trace the development of Indo-European languages by working backwards and identifying patterns from their mother language, Proto-Indo-European. The book is divided into two main halves, the first of which acts as a definition and introduction the study of Indo-European poetics which is expanded upon by implementing Watkins' idea of the "dragon-slaying myth" and defending this concept through a number of case studies involving languages connected by a common theme. Watkins expands upon the "dragon-slaying myth" in part two of the text by offering new research into his proposed formula of "HERO SLAY SERPENT", he also attempts to reconstruct an example of Proto-Indo-European through the comparative method of historical linguistics.

Watkins remained dedicated to the research and development of historical linguistics throughout his entire academic and professional career. In 1982 he was a founding member of the "East Coast Indo-European Conference" in which he participated in a large majority of its annual meetings.

Watkins, in a sense, completed his contribution to this area with his Indogermanische Grammatik, vol. 3, part 1: Geschichte der indogermanischen Verbalflexion (1969). Meanwhile, his work on Indo-European vocabulary and poetics yielded a large number of articles on (among others) Celtic, Anatolian, Greek, Italic and Indo-Iranian material, presented directly in his Selected Writings and indirectly in his book, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (Oxford University Press, 1995).

His doctoral dissertation at Harvard University, Indo-European Origins of the Celtic Verb I. The Sigmatic Aorist (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1962), which deeply reflected the structuralist approach of Jerzy Kuryłowicz, opened a fresh era of creative work in Celtic comparative linguistics and the study of the verbal system of Indo-European languages.

In 1959, Watkins was initially appointed the position of instructor at Harvard University. He later became assistant professor in 1960, associate professor with tenure in 1962, and full professor in 1966. In 1989 Watkins was appointed to the position of Victor. S Thomas Professor of Linguistics and Classics. Linguists influenced by Watkins during his tenure at Harvard include Ives Goddard, Jay Jasanoff, D. Gary Miller, Michael Silverstein, Alice Harris, H. Craig Melchert, Alan Nussbaum, Brent Vine, Mark Hale, Andrew Garrett, Joshua Katz and Benjamin Fortson.

Watkins received his initial undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1954, graduating summa cum laude, and his Ph.D in Linguistics in 1959. During his time at Harvard, Watkins also studied abroad at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, France, from 1954 to 1955 as well as the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies from 1957 to 1958.

Calvert Watkins (/ˈwɒtkɪnz/; March 13, 1933 – March 20, 2013) was an American linguist and philologist, known for his book How to Kill a Dragon. He was a professor of linguistics and the classics at Harvard University and after retirement went to serve as professor-in-residence at UCLA.

Calvert Watkins was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on March 13, 1933 to Ralph James Watkins, an economist and government advisor, and Willye Ward, a Spanish teacher who translated the personal memoirs of former Mexican president Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Much of Watkins's childhood was spent in New York City, and he graduated from Friends Seminary in Manhattan before beginning his career at Harvard University. Watkins's early exposure to Latin and Greek inspired him at the age of fifteen to decide to become an Indo-Europeanist.