author
William Ridgeway
1853–1926
An energetic Anglo-Irish scholar who helped shape the study of archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge, he wrote boldly about the ancient world and how people used money, ritual, and myth. His work ranged widely, but it was always driven by a taste for big questions.
1 Audiobook
The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards
by William Ridgeway
About the author
Born in County Offaly, Ireland, in 1853, William Ridgeway studied at Trinity College Dublin and later at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He became a fellow of Caius, taught Greek at Queen's College Cork, and in 1892 was appointed Disney Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge, a post that made him one of the university's best-known voices in classical and archaeological study.
Ridgeway wrote on an unusually wide range of subjects, including early coinage and weights, the ancient horse, Greek drama, the origins of tragedy, and the peoples of the classical world. He was also active in anthropology and helped promote that field at Cambridge, earning a reputation as a lively, original, and sometimes provocative thinker.
He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and was later knighted. Ridgeway died in 1926, leaving behind a body of work that reflects the restless curiosity of a scholar who was never content to stay within a single discipline.