GEDNEY, William John. Orchards, Wash. 4.4.1915 — Ann Arbor 14.11.1999. U.S. Linguist, interested in Sanskrit, Pāli and especially Thai. Professor in Ann Arbor. Son of John Marshall G. (d. 1918) and Lillian Viola Woster. Educated at Whitman College (A.B. 1935). Ph.D. in Indic and Far Eastern Languages 1947 at Yale. In 1955 research associate in South East Asia program at Cornell University. From 1960 Professor of Linguistics at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, retired 1981. In 1984 living there as emeritus. Married 1952 in Bangkok “Choy” Phatharapak Manacheep. Gedney was an important pioneer of comparative Thai linguistics.

Publications: Diss. Indic loanwords in spoken Thai. Manuscript 1947.

– Mainly wrote on Thai.

Sources: Dir. Am. Sch. 8th ed. 3. 1982; http://faculty-history.dc.umich.edu/faculty/william-j-gedney/memoir; ancestors.familysearch.org.