Charles Farwell Edson, Jr.
Charles Farwell Edson Jr. (1905–1988) was an American scholar of Ancient History. Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1905 as the son of poet and musician Charles Farwell Edson and social activist and feminist Katherine Philips Edson, Edson received the degree of A.B. in Classics from Stanford University in 1929 (where he already presented research talks as an undergraduate). He went on to earn his Ph.D. in History at Harvard University in 1939 with a dissertation entitled “Five Studies in Macedonian History" directed by Professor William Scott Ferguson (his dissertation research was supported by a Guggenheim  Fellowship in 1936 and 1937). While a graduate student, Edson shared the driving with Alistair Cooke on a trip from the East Coast to Hollywood (at one point while Edson was driving, he ran into a cow and Cooke ended up in a hospital). During World War II, Edson served in the United States Army, eventually becoming an officer in the Office of Strategic Services. Edson taught for his entire career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he worked his way from Assistant Professor to Full Professor from 1938 to 1976 and was a very popular classroom instructor as  well as successful graduate mentor. Edson held another Guggenheim Fellowship from 1956 to 1957. He was awarded a Membership in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey from 1952 to 1953 and again from 1962 to 1963. He was elected a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute in 1972. Edson won the Goodwin Award of the American Philological Association in 1974. In 1981, some of his former students published a "Festschrift", entitled "Ancient Macedonian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson", in his honor. Professor Edson died in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1988. Charles Farwell Edson, Jr. Charles