William Duguid Geddes

Sir William Duguid Geddes (1828 – 9 February 1900), Scottish scholar and educationalist.

Geddes was born in Glass, Aberdeenshire. He was educated at Elgin academy and university and King's College, University of Aberdeen, and was parish schoolmaster at Gamrie in his early career. In 1853 he was appointed rector of Aberdeen Grammar School, and in 1860 he was appointed professor of Greek at the University of Aberdeen. On the death of the Rev. Dr. Pirie in 1885, Geddes was appointed principal of the (united) University. It is chiefly as a teacher that Geddes is remembered, and in his enthusiastic and successful efforts to raise the standard of Greek at the Scottish universities he has been compared with the humanists of the Renaissance. Amongst other works he was the author of A Greek Grammar (1855; 17th edition, 1883; new and revised edition, 1893); a meritorious edition of the Phaedo of Plato (2nd ed., 1885); and The Problem of the Homeric Poems (1878), in which, while supporting Grote's view that the Iliad consisted of an original Achilleis with insertions or additions by later hands, he maintains that these insertions are due to the author of the Odyssey.

He was created LL.D. of the University of Edinburgh in 1876, Litt.D. of the University of Dublin in 1893, and was knighted in 1892.

He died at the Chanonry Lodge, Old Aberdeen, on 9 February 1900.

Geddes married on 28 April 1859 Rachel Robertson, daughter of William White, merchant, of Aberdeen; she survived him, with an only daughter, Rachel Blanche Geddes, who married on 23 June 1887 Mr. John Harrower, professor of Greek at Aberdeen.

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