Frederick Bodmer

Frederick Bodmer (actually Friedrich Bodmer; * 1893 or 1894; † unknown) was a Swiss philologist and author of a widely read popular science about the languages ​​of the world. He wrote his dissertation in 1924 at the University of Zurich on the subject of studies for dialogue in Lessing's Nathan. He then taught in Europe and in the 1930s and 1940s at the University of Cape Town, where he was in 1933 described as a Trotskyist and politically radical and at the New Era Fellowship, a debating and discussion event, which had been founded in 1937 by Goolam Gool and a forum offered for black students, participated; see also prepared by the artist Irma Stern portrait from 1929.

Later Bodmer taught at the Department of Modern Languages ​​at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT ), where he was replaced in 1955 by Noam Chomsky.

Works

• The Loom of Language. A Guide to Foreign Languages ​​for the Home Student; ed. Lancelot Hogben of; Primers for the Age of Plenty, 3; London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1943 German translation: The world's languages. History, grammar, vocabulary in a comparative representation; Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Petrovich, 1955
• Current issue: The languages ​​of the world. History, grammar, vocabulary in a comparative representation; Cologne: Parkland -Verlag, 1997; ISBN 3-88059-880-0