Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister

Born in Dublin on July 8, 1870, Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister grew up in a learned family and was educated in both Dublin and Cambridge. He studied mathematics at St John's College, Cambridge, then moved into geology and prehistoric archaeology, developing the wide-ranging curiosity that marked his career.

His professional life had two main sides. In Palestine, he worked for the Palestine Exploration Fund from 1898 to 1909, especially at Gezer, and later directed excavations at the Hill of Ophel in Jerusalem from 1923 to 1925. His reports on Gezer were especially influential, and his book A History of Civilization in Palestine reached a wide audience.

Back in Ireland, he served as professor of Celtic archaeology at University College Dublin from 1909 to 1943. He published on an extraordinary range of subjects, but he is especially remembered for his work on ogham and early inscriptions, including Studies in Irish Epigraphy and the two-volume Corpus inscriptionum insularum Celticarum. He died in 1950, leaving behind a body of work that connected archaeology, language, and early history in lasting ways.