Robert Gordon Latham
Robert Gordon Latham
Early life
The eldest son of Thomas Latham, vicar of Billingborough, Lincolnshire, he was born there on 24 March 1812. He entered Eton College in 1819, and in 1829 went on to King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1832, and was soon afterwards elected a Fellow.[1][2]
Philologist
Latham studied philology for a year on the continent, near
In 1839 he was elected professor of English language and literature in
Medical career
Latham decided to enter the medical profession, and in 1842 became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians; he subsequently obtained the degree of M.D. at the University of London.[2] He became lecturer on forensic medicine and materia medica at the Middlesex Hospital, and in 1844 he was elected assistant-physician there.
Ethnologist
Latham was more interested, however, in ethnology and philology. In 1849 he abandoned medicine and resigned his appointments. In 1852 he was given the direction of the ethnological department of The Crystal Palace, as it moved to Sydenham.[2]
Latham was a follower of
Latham moved on, though, from Prichard's assumption (now sometimes called "languages and nations"), that the historical relationships of languages matched perfectly the relationships of the groups speaking them. In 1862 he made a prominent protest against the central Asian theory of the origin of the
Later life
Works
In 1841 Latham produced a well-known text-book, The English Language. He devoted himself to a thorough revision of
Other works included:
- An Elementary English Grammar for the Use of Schools, 1843
- The Natural History of the Varieties of Mankind, 1850
- The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies, 1851
- Man and his Migrations, 1851
- The Ethnology of Europe, 1852
- The Native Races of the Russian Empire, 1854
- On the Varieties of the Human Species, in Orr's Circle of the Sciences vol. 1, 1854[13]
- Logic in its Application to Language, 1856
- Descriptive Ethnology, 1858 Volume I Volume II
- Opuscula: Essays Chiefly Philological and Ethnographical, 1860
- A Smaller English Grammar for the Use of Schools, 1861
- (with David Thomas Ansted) The Channel Islands, 1862; 2nd edition (1865).
- Elements of Comparative Philology, 1862
References
- ^ "Latham, Robert Gordon (LTN829RG)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .
- ^ Franklin E. Court, Institutionalizing English Literature: the culture and politics of literary study, 1750–1900 (1992) pp. 78–9; Google Books.
- ^ Carl John Birch Burchard, Norwegian Life and Literature; English accounts and views, especially in the 19th century (1920), p. 106; archive.org.
- ^ Raymond Wilson Chambers, Man's Unconquerable Mind: studies of English writers, from Bede to A. E. Housman and W. P. Ker (2953), p. 350; Google Books.
- ^ Sadiah Qureshi, Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2011), p. 217; Google Books.
- ^ Robert Young, Colonial Desire: hybridity in theory, culture, and race (1996), p. 66; Google Books.
- ^ Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British ideas and action, 1780–1850 (1973), p. 369; Google Books.
- ^ Bruce David Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian race: a political history of racial identity (2006), pp. 111–2; Google Books.
- ^ Thomas R. Trautmann, Languages and Nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras (2006), p. 223; Google Books.
- George W. Stocking, Jr., Victorian Anthropology (1987), p. 58.
- ^ Thomas Gordon Hake, Memoirs of Eighty Years (1892), p. 208; archive.org.
- ^ William Somerville Orr; Richard Owen; Robert Gordon Latham (1854). The Principles of Physiology. W. S. Orr and Company.
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne. {{cite encyclopedia}}
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Latham, Robert Gordon". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
External links
Media related to Robert Gordon Latham at Wikimedia Commons
- Works by Robert Gordon Latham at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Robert Gordon Latham at Internet Archive
- Works by Robert Gordon Latham at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)