James Hadley

James Hadley (March 10 1821 - November 14 1872), American scholar, was born in Fairfield, Herkimer County, New York, where his father was professor of chemistry at Fairfield Medical College.

At the age of nine an accident left him lame for life. He graduated from Yale University in 1842, having entered the Junior class in 1840; studied in the Theological Department of Yale, and in 1844-1845 was a tutor in Middlebury College. He was tutor at Yale in 1845-1848, assistant professor of Greek in 1848-1851, and professor of Greek, succeeding President Woolsey, from 1851 until his death in Hew Haven.

As an undergraduate he showed himself an able mathematician, but the influence of Edward Elbridge Salisbury, under whom Hadley and WD Whitney studied Sanskrit together, turned his attention toward the study of language. He knew Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian, several Celtic languages and the languages of modern Europe; but he published little, and his scholarship found scant outlet in the college class-room.

His most original written work was an essay on Greek accent, published in a German version in Georg Curtius's "Studien zur griechischen und lateinischen Graminatik".

Hadley's "Greek Grammar" (1860; revised by Frederic de Forest Allen, 1884) was based on Curtius's "Schulgrammatik" (5852, 1855, 1857, 1859), and long held its place in American schools.

Hadley was a member of the American Committee for the revision of the New Testament, was president of the American Oriental Society (1871-1872), and contributed to Webster's dictionary an essay on the "History of the English Language". In 1873 were published his "Introduction to Roman Law" (edited by TD Woolsey) and his "Essays, Philological and Critical" (edited by WD Whitney).

See the memorial by Noah Porter in "The New Englander", vol. xxxii. (Jan. 1873), pp. 35-55; and the sketch by his son, AT Hadley, in "Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences", vol. v. (1903), pp. 247-254.