William Burley Lockwood
linguist, Professor of Germanic and Indo-European Philology at the University of Reading (1968-1982), previously Professor of Comparative Philology at Humboldt University (1961-1965)
William Burley Lockwood (13 April 1917 – 30 April 2012) was a Professor of Germanic and Indo-European Philology at the University of Reading from 1968 until his retirement in 1982.
Biography
After leaving school and spending some time working and travelling in England, Germany, Austria and the Balkans, he went to Manchester University and obtained First Class Honours in German in 1942, followed by a DipEd and M.A. at Bristol University, where he received a distinction in practical teaching.
After working briefly in the German Department at Durham University in 1945, Lockwood taught at the University of Birmingham, during which time he also briefly taught as a Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Sydney. As he left Birmingham, the university awarded him a D.Litt. on the basis of his many publications.
In 1961 he received an invitation to the Chair of Comparative Philology at the Humboldt-Universität in East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic. 1961, however, was the year in which the Communist regime erected its infamous wall, and after four years of increasing disillusionment with the political climate he returned to the West.
He settled in Dublin, intending to devote himself to his philological studies, including German and Germanic languages (especially Faroese) as well as Roman, Hellenic, Slavonic and Celtic (especially Welsh) languages.
A year later, however, he was invited to take up a specially established readership in Germanic and Indo-European philology at Reading. This readership was converted into a chair in 1968, and he remained at Reading until his retirement in 1982.
The public source identifies “William Burley Lockwood” as linguist, Professor of Germanic and Indo-European Philology at the University of Reading (1968-1982), previously Professor of Comparative Philology at Humboldt University (1961-1965). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around William, Burley and Lockwood.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8006168. VIAF identifies the subject as 70175253. The Library of Congress control number is n50050513. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917, 2012, 1968 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Burley Lockwood” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.