Robert Gordon Latham
| Prof. Robert Gordon Latham MD, FRS | |||||||||||||
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| Born | 1812 | ||||||||||||
| Died | 1888 | ||||||||||||
| Residence |
Athenaeum 121 Disraeli Road, Putney, SW [1883] | ||||||||||||
| Occupation |
academic medical ethnologist philologist | ||||||||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
ESL Council 1845-46 Member
ESL Council 1846-47 Member
ESL Council 1847-48 Member
ESL Council 1848-49 Member
ESL Council 1849-50 Hon. Secretary
ESL Council 1850-51 Vice President [resigns Oct. 1850]
House Notes
1849.04.19 resolved that a Committee be appointed to consider the present condition and future prospects of the Society and that the following gentlemen be elected members of that Committee: Sir Charles Malcolm, William Spence Esq., G.B. Greenough Esq., Joseph Fletcher Esq., Thomas Hodgkin MD, Thomas May Esq., William Ogilby Esq., Dr Latham, and that these form a quorum
1849.06.14 Dr R.G. Latham, MD was recommended to the Anniversary Meeting as Secretary to the Society.
1850.03.22 'That a committee consisting of Mr Dunn, Mr Greenough, Dr R.G. Latham, Thomas Hodgkin MD, Mr Nash and Sir C. Malcolm, with power to add to the number, be appointed for the purpose of considering the means of improving the prospects of the Society’
1888.03.13 death noted
Notes From Elsewhere
Robert Gordon Latham FRS (24 March 1812 – 9 March 1888) was an English ethnologist and philologist.
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]
Latham studied philology for a year on the continent, near Hamburg, then in Copenhagen with Rasmus Christian Rask,[3] and finally in Christiania (now Oslo).[2] In Norway he knew Ludvig Kristensen Daa and Henrik Wergeland; he wrote about the country in Norway and the Norwegians (1840).[4]
In 1839 he was elected professor of English language and literature in University College, London.[2] Here he associated with Thomas Hewitt Key and Henry Malden, linguists working in the tradition of Friedrich August Rosen. Together they developed the Philological Society, expanding it from a student group to a broad base among London philologists, publishing its own Proceedings.[5]
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.
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 James Cowles Prichard, and like Prichard took ethnology to be, in the main, the part of historical philology that traced the origin of races through the genealogical relationships of languages.[7] He frequently lectured in this area. As a baseline he used the three-race theory of Georges Cuvier.[8] Along with Prichard, however, Latham criticised Cuvier's use of the "Caucasian race" concept; and he preferred to avoid the term "race", referring instead to "varieties of man", as a reaction to the rise of polygenist theory around 1850.[9] However, he followed in 1854 by writing The Native Races of the Russian Empire.
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 Aryan race. He supported views which were later advocated by Theodor Benfey, Parker, Isaac Taylor, and others.[2] The origin of the Indo-European languages was, in Latham's view, in Lithuania; and he strongly attacked Max Müller, proponent of the "Aryan theory", at the same time as did John Crawfurd arguing from rather different premises.[10] The controversy over Latham's views on Indo-European languages following his Comparative Philology (1862) did permanent damage to his scholarly reputation.[11]
Gordon Hake wrote in his memoirs of Latham's habit of pleading poverty and asking for money.[12] In 1863 Latham obtained a civil list pension. In later life he was afflicted with aphasia, and died at Putney on 9 March 1888.[2]
In 1841 Latham produced a well-known text-book, The English Language. He devoted himself to a thorough revision of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, which he completed in 1870. He subsequently spent much time on a Dissertation on the Hamlet of Saxo Grammaticus and of Shakespeare. His works on the English language passed through many editions, and were regarded as authoritative till they were superseded by those of Richard Morris and Walter William Skeat.[2]
Member of the Athenaeum Club from 1851
Publications
External Publications
Norway and the Norwegians (1840)Comparative Philology (1862)
The English Language
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
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).
House Publications
On the language of the Oregon Territory. read 11 dec. 1844
On the Ethnography of Russian America READ 19 Feb 1845 in Ed. Phil. J. 1845-6, p. 35
supplement [to daniell's paper] upon the philological ethnography of the countries around the Bight of Biafra 28 jan. 1846
On the Caucasian tribes. Read 12 Apr 1848
Abstract of the transactions of the ethnological subsection of the meeting of the BA at Swansea. Read 22 Nov. 1848
The principle of classification of groups of languages, with particular reference to certain supposed additions to the Indo-European tribes of languages. Read 20 Dec. 1848. Printed
On the route of the population of Polynesia. Read Nov. 1849
On certain peculiarities of the Mexican method of numeration. AND On certain recent additions to the philosophical ethnography of New Caledonia, Oregon, and California. Read Dec. 1849
On the relation of the Mexican civilization to that of the other populations of America. Read Mar 1850
On the minute ethnology of Europe
On the pagan population of the Indian archipelago