1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kirchhoff, Johann Wilhelm Adolf

KIRCHHOFF, JOHANN WILHELM ADOLF (1826–1908), German classical scholar and epigraphist, was born in Berlin on the 6th of January 1826. In 1865 he was appointed professor of classical philology in the university of his native city. He died on the 26th of February 1908. He is the author of Die Homerische Odyssee (1859), putting forward an entirely new theory as to the composition of the Odyssey; editions of Plotinus (1856), Euripides (1855 and 1877–1878). Aeschylus (1880), Hesiod (Works and Days, 1889), Xenophon, On the Athenian Constitution (3rd ed., 1889); Über die Entstehungszeit des Herodotischen Geschichtswerkes (2nd ed., 1878); Thukydides und sein Urkundenmaterial (1895).

The following works are the result of his epigraphical and palaeographical studies: Die Umbrischen Sprachdenkmäler (1851); Das Stadtrecht von Bantia (1853), on the tablet discovered in 1790 at Oppido near Banzi, containing a plebiscite relating to the municipal affairs of the ancient Bantia; Das Gotische Runenalphabet (1852); Die Fränkischen Runen (1855); Studien zur Geschichte des Griechischen Alphabets (4th ed., 1887). The second part of vol. iv. of the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (1859, containing the Christian inscriptions) and vol. i. of the C. I. Atticarum (1873, containing the inscriptions before 403) with supplements thereto (vol. iv. pts. 1–3, 1877–1891) are edited by him.