William Richard Morfill - Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 51° 46.006 W 001° 15.460
30U E 620228 N 5736534
Blue plaque honoring former professor in Oxford.
Waymark Code: WM9ZYH
Location: Southern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 10/24/2010
Views: 3
Text of plaque:
William Richard
Morfill
1834 - 1909
First Professor of
Russian and Slavonic
Languages
lived here
1863 - 1909
William Morfill was self taught in Slavonic languages as at the time there was no curriuculum for them at the University. He learned the languages through extensive travel to Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia and elsewhere and developed dictionaries and grammer books for the languages. His home became an unofficial gathering place for faculty and visiting scholars interested in the languages. He was named as a Reader in Russsian in 1889 by Oxford University and in 1900 he was made the Professor of Russian and Slavonic Languages, the first to be appointed at any British university. Russian was accepted as a a degree in 1903 through the efforts of Morfill. He is credited with pioneering a new field of academic study.