Robert D. King

Robert D. King was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, attended Georgia Institute of Technology where he received a B.S. and an M.S. in mathematics, then the University of Stuttgart as an exchange student in 1957-1958, finally the University of Wisconsin where he received an M.A. in German and a Ph.D. in Germanic linguistics. He worked as a computer programmer at Cape Canaveral in 1960-1961 and did linguistic fieldwork in India beginning in 1963 down to 2005. He joined the linguistics faculty at...See more

Robert D. King was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, attended Georgia Institute of Technology where he received a B.S. and an M.S. in mathematics, then the University of Stuttgart as an exchange student in 1957-1958, finally the University of Wisconsin where he received an M.A. in German and a Ph.D. in Germanic linguistics. He worked as a computer programmer at Cape Canaveral in 1960-1961 and did linguistic fieldwork in India beginning in 1963 down to 2005. He joined the linguistics faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 1965 and published extensively on theoretical linguistics, specializing in historical linguistics, later focusing on Yiddish and India. He was the Founding Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas, serving in administration from 1974-1999. His books include Historical Linguistics and Generative Grammar (1969) and Nehru and the Language Politics of India (1997). He has published in The Atlantic Monthly and the journals Commentary , Mosaic , Quillette , National Review, and Tablet . See less