Knox, Bernard MacGregor Walker (1914– )

English-born US classics scholar and author. He earned his PhD at Yale University in 1948 and taught classics there (1948–61). He then served as director of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC (1961–85). In addition to his articles, reviews, and translations, Knox's books included The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (1980), Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theatre (1980), and The Oldest Dead White European Males (1993).

Knox was born in Bradford, England. He gained his BA at St John's College, Cambridge University, England, in 1936, after which he went to Spain and fought (and was wounded) with the International Brigade in the Civil War. He emigrated to the USA in 1939. While serving with the US Army in Europe during World War II (1942–45), he became a US citizen in 1943, and was awarded two Bronze Stars and the French croix de guerre. Among his various academic honours and awards, he was the 1963 Sather lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and received the 1978 George Jean Nathan Award for drama criticism.

While pursuing his academic career, Knox wrote the script for and performed in four films for educational television on Sophocles's Oedipus the King; these films are still used in classrooms throughout the USA. He was the assistant editor and a contributor to Volume I of the Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1985) and he was editor of The Norton Book of Classical Literature (1993).