Hale, William Gardner (1849-1928)

US classicist. He was influential in founding the American School of Classical Studies at Rome (now the American Academy at Rome) and was its first director (1895). His Art of Reading Latin (1887) was enormously influential, but his life's work was the preparation of an edition of the Catullus manuscript (known as R), which he found in the Vatican library. Hale was born in Savannah, Georgia. He was educated at Harvard University, graduating with a BA in 1870, and taught at Cornell University (1880-1892) and the University of Chicago (1892-1919).