Allen Ross Scaife (2008)

It is especially sad when those who devote themselves to leading their fields into the future are denied a fair portion of that future for themselves. Allen Ross Scaife was a native of Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he was born in 1960. He majored in Classics and philosophy at William and Mary and received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1990. A Fulbright year in 1985 allowed him unfettered time at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he developed research and materials for the many and diverse courses he taught at the University of Kentucky from 1991 until his death. He will be remembered by the world at large for his work as editor of the Stoa Consortium for Electronic Publication in the Humanities. His website set the standard for non-print publications. He also co-founded Diotima, where he collected and made available to the world the materials he used so successfully in his course on women in antiquity. He also helped found the Suda on Line for Byzantine Greek Lexicography, Educe, a scanning technology to read unwrapped papyrus rolls, and he collaborated in the high-resolution digital imaging of the Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad. At the University of Kentucky he was instrumental in founding the Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities, a project to introduce his colleagues to using computers in their research. He took as much joy in watching his three sons play soccer as they took in playing it. Sailing and hiking vacations in his native Virginia gave him special pleasure and special time with his family. He was claimed by cancer on March 15, 2008, but the future of our research will forever be indebted to him.