14 Facts About Geoffrey Kirk

Geoffrey Kirk published widely on pre-Socratic philosophy and the work of the Greek poet Homer, culminating in a six-volume philological commentary on the Iliad published between 1985 and 1993.

Geoffrey Kirk was deployed to the Aegean Sea as part of the Levant Schooner Flotilla and distinguished himself through his command of modern Greek.

Geoffrey Stephen Kirk was born in December 1921 in Nottingham.

Geoffrey Kirk's parents were Frederic Kirk, an educational administrator at Northampton Polytechnic and World War I veteran, and his wife Enid.

In 1941, after only one year at Cambridge University, Geoffrey Kirk volunteered to join the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

Geoffrey Kirk served in the Levant Schooner Flotilla, an Allied naval organisation operating in the Aegean Sea.

Geoffrey Kirk rose to command a caique, one of the Aegean fishing boats which were used by the Allies to stage landings on the Greek coast.

Geoffrey Kirk's first academic position was a research fellowship at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

In 1950, Geoffrey Kirk married the artist Barbara Traill, with whom he had one daughter.

Geoffrey Kirk then took up a permanent position at Cambridge.

Geoffrey Kirk was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1959 at just thirty eight years of age.

In 1965, Geoffrey Kirk returned to the United States and took up a professorship of classics at Yale University.

Geoffrey Kirk died from heart failure in March 2003 in a nursing home at Rake, West Sussex.

Geoffrey Kirk was survived by his second wife Kirsten, his daughter and four stepchildren.