RIP Herbert Harry Paper

Herbert H. Paper died January 23, 2012 in Cincinnati. A notice of his death appears in the January 25 2010 Cincinnati Enquirer.  Another, by Jonathan D. Sarna appeared January 30, 2011 in H-Judaic.

 

His faculty profile at the website of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion reads:

Dr. Paper is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and near Eastern Languages, and is the Editor of the Hebrew Union College Annual, HUC-JIR/Cincinnati. He received a doctorate from the University of Chicago. Dr. Paper taught at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and joined HUC-JIR as the Dean of Graduate Studies. His specialties are Persian studies, concentrating on the history of the Persian language and on the ancient languages of Iran, and Yiddish literature.

Education

• Ph.D., University of Chicago (1951)

Lecture Titles

• History of the Yiddish Literature
• The Languages of the Jews Throughout History
• Sholem Aleichem as a Social Critic

Why is he mentioned here on the Persepolis Fortification Archive Blog?

He was a student of George Cameron, and a member of the first generation of scholars focusing on Elamite language at the University of Chicago following World War Two.  He wrote his dissertation under Cameron in the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures, accepted in August 1951.  It was subsequently published as The Phonology and Morphology of Royal Achaemenid Elamite by the University of Michigan Press in 1955.  It is available online from the HATHI Trust Digital Library.  That digital version was mentioned here on this blog in May 2009.

The University of Michigan Faculty History Project has a cursory profile.
WorldCat Identities has Paper, Herbert H. (Herbert Harry) 1925-

He is alleged to have said:

It is well to remember that a Martian observing his first baseball game would be quite correct in concluding that the last two words of the National Anthem are: PLAY BALL!