William Rollo

William "Willie" Rollo Jr. was a Scottish-born South African academic.

William Rollo
Principal of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland
Interim
In office
November 1953  December 1955
Preceded byOffice established
Succeeded byWalter Adams
Personal details
Born1892
Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Died1960 (aged 6768)
Grahamstown, Cape Province, Union of South Africa
Alma materUniversity of Glasgow (MA)
Leiden University (DLitt)

History

He was born in 1892 in Glasgow and graduated from the University of Glasgow with an MA in classics in 1915.[1] After the war he completed his DLitt in linguistics at Leiden University. His thesis was on the Marquina dialect of the Basque language. He immigrated to South Africa in 1925, where he was professor of classics, then Head of the Classics Department and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Cape Town until 1953, when he was invited to take up the post of interim principal of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, now the University of Zimbabwe.[2]

Rollo was a skilled linguist. During the Second World War he taught himself Japanese so he could teach the rudiments of the language to South African pilots who were going to fight in the Far East.

Death

He died in 1960 in Grahamstown, while teaching classics at Rhodes University.

References

Educational offices
Preceded by
not established
Vice–Chancellors and principals of the University of Zimbabwe
1953 – 1955
Succeeded by
Sir Walter Adams


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