HATFIELD, James Taft. Brooklyn, NY 15.6.1862 — Cook county, Illinois 3.10.1945. U.S. Linguist (Germanic and IE) and Indologist. Professor in Evanstown. Son of a Methodist minister, Robert Miller H. and Elizabeth Ann Taft. A.B. 1883 Northwestern University, A.M. 1886 ibid. (and 1937 Litt.D.). In 1883-84 travelled in Japan, China and India. In 1884-85 Professor of Classical Languages at Rust University in Mississippi. In 1887-90 Fellow at Johns Hopkins, 1890 Ph.D. there (diss. on Latin poetry). Further studies 1896-97 at Tübingen, Berlin and Oxford. In 1898 participated on Cruiser Yale in the Spanish-American war. In 1890-1934 Professor of German Language and Literature at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In 1936 a lecture tour in Germany. Married 1890 Ann Estelle Caraway (d. 1906), two sons and one daughter, then Maude Hollingworth Wilson, three children.

Publications: Much on German(istics) and Latin, on Goethe, Wilhelm Müller and Longfellow.

– Elements of Sanskrit Grammar. 93 p. Lucknow 1884.

– “The Āucanasādbhūtāni, Text & transl.”, JAOS 15, 1893, 207-220 (an Atharva Pariśiṣṭa); two short articles on the same in PAOS 1888, xiif. & clvi-clxi.

Sources: *V. Füchtner, Internat. Germanistenlexikon 1, 2003, 276-278; Who Was Who in Am. 2; Wikipedia with photo; ancestry.com.