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Johan Ludwig Heiberg, a Dane born in 1854, sometimes confused with his namesake the famous Danish playwright of one generation earlier. Heiberg was a major force in Danish classical scholarship, and on the international stage as well, through his magisterial editions of ancient texts. At the high point of this work stood his editions of the ancient mathematicians and scientists. His Euclid, his Archimedes and his Apollonius of Perga, done between 1879 and 1910, remain the standards today. His scholarly work ranged widely, from meticulously editing commentators on Aristotle to his fellow Dane, Christian existentialist Søren Kierkegaard. Religion was a source of trouble to him personally, and perhaps professionally also. He is described by one biographer as “an embittered, almost fanatical, anti-Christian”. He published attacks on this religion, but did not use his preferred languages, German and Latin. He published them in Danish. A central point in the obituary which he published (1887) of his teacher Madvig might equally be said Heiberg himself: “he was personally very quiet, very cautious and mild in judgment, but of the two components of his favorite motto “Truth and Love” it was always the first that stood at the top.” This teacher was Johan Nicolai Madvig, and the obituary appeared in Bursian’s Biographisches Jahrbuch (1887). More than twenty years later (1910) Heiberg’s magisterial 3-volume edition of Archimedes came out, dedicated humbly to Madvig, “viro doctissimo clarissimo humanissimo”. Minor improvements to his Archimedes edition are being offered thanks to some x-ray evaluation of a particular manuscript (now ongoing in 2006) at Stanford University. But Heiberg doctissimus still towers above the field of Archimedes scholars from 1910 to 2010, in the judgment of the scholarly community. Heiberg, like Madvig before him easily reached the status of worldwide scholarly recognition. They were admired by such demanding judges as A.E. Taylor and Lewis Campbell in Britain, Shorey in America and Wilamowitz and others on the Continent. Judges with such standards are not common anymore. [This bio has drawn on the article by Paul T. Keyser, in “Classical Scholarship: a biographical encyclopedia”, Garland (1990), edited by Ward Briggs and William Calder] |
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