Edmund G. Berry (2005)

The name of Edmund G. Berry will always be synonymous with classics at the University of Manitoba. A native of Leslie in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Berry emigrated to Canada as a boy with his family. He graduated from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1936, receiving the Prince of Wales Prize for the highest grades in the college. In the next year he moved to the University of Chicago, where he completed a dissertation on Moira and Tyche in Greek literature under Werner Jaeger in 1940 with a Daniel L. (not Paul) Shorey Fellowship. In 1940 he moved to Manitoba, rising to Professor of Classics in 1956. In 1961 he was named Head of Classics, a position he held for 17 years. He published over 40 articles in his 55-year career at Manitoba and is best known for Emerson's Plutarch, published by Harvard University Press in 1961. He received a Guggenheim grant in 1951 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1971. He died November 3, 2005.