Editing Ada Adler

{{short description|Danish classical scholar}}
{{Infobox person
| name        = Ada Sara Adler
| image       = Ada_Adler.png
| alt         = 
| caption     = Ada Adler c. 1900
| birth_date  = {{Birth date|1878|02|18|df=y}}
| birth_place = [[Frederiksberg]]
| death_date  = {{Death date and age|1946|12|28|1878|02|18|df=y}}
| death_place = [[Copenhagen]]
| nationality = Danish
| other_names = 
| known_for   = 
| occupation  = Librarian and classical scholar
}}

'''Ada Sara Adler''' (18 February 1878 – 28 December 1946) was a [[Denmark|Danish]] [[classical scholar]] and [[librarian]].

She is best known for her critical edition of the Byzantine encyclopedia ''[[Suda]]'' (5 vols., 1928–38), which still provides the standard text.

==Biography==
Adler was born on 18 February 1878, the daughter of Bertel David Adler and Elise Johanne, née Fraenckel.<ref name=Hilden/> Her family was of high social standing and well-connected. Her grandfather, [[David Baruch Adler]], was a wealthy banker and politician. Her aunt, Ellen Adler Bohr, was the mother of [[Niels Bohr]] and [[Harald Bohr]].<ref name=Hilden/> Through the Bohrs, she was also related to Danish psychologist [[Edgar Rubin]].<ref name=Pind/>

Adler's early education was at Miss Steenberg's School and then [[N. Zahle's School]], where she studied [[Ancient Greek]] under [[Anders Bjørn Drachmann]] beginning in 1893.<ref name=Roth2/> She then went to the [[University of Copenhagen]], where she continued to study Greek and comparative religion with Drachmann and also Professor [[Vilhelm Thomsen]].<ref name=Roth2/><ref name=Roth/> In 1906, she completed her master's thesis on ancient Greek [[religion]], as well as receiving an award from the Historical Philological Society for research on the myth of [[Pandora]].<ref name=Roth2/> In 1912, after finishing her master's, she traveled to [[Vienna]] to study, during which time she published a few articles on Greek religion and completed research and writing for [[Pauly-Wissowa]].<ref name=Roth2/>

In 1901, she married Danish philosopher [[Anton Thomsen]], whom she had met at a dinner on 20 March 1897.<ref name=Hilden/> Thomsen preserved an account of this first meeting in his diary, recalling how struck he was by her.<ref name=Pind/> They divorced in 1912.<ref name=Roth/>

During World War II, she was evacuated to Sweden with other Danish Jews. She taught Greek in the Danish school in Lund.<ref name=Roth/>

She is buried in [[Mosaisk Vestre Begravelsesplads]] near Copenhagen.

== Scholarly career ==
She is best known for her critical, standard edition of the ''[[Suda]]'', which she published in 5 volumes (Leipzig, 1928–1938). She also contributed several articles to [[Pauly–Wissowa]]'s ''Realencyclopädie''. In 2016, Oxford University Press published a collection of essays honouring female classical scholars. The chapter on Adler was written by Catharine Roth, a current managing editor of the ''Suda On Line Project''; Roth contextualizes Adler's seminal contribution to scholarship of the ''Suda'' as the kind of detailed cataloguing work which in the nineteenth century was granted to women while men did the more 'interesting' original research, but which was actually crucial to enabling further research<ref name=Roth2 /> (although the immense majority of scholarly cataloguing was also carried out by men at the time). Classical scholar William Calder, professor emeritus in classics at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign]], called Adler "incontestably the greatest woman philologist who ever lived'.<ref name=Calder /> German classical scholar [[Otto Weinreich]], who lived roughly contemporary to Adler, called her edition of the ''Suda'' "''bewundernswert''" (worthy of admiration) in 1929, shortly after the appearance of the first volume.<ref name=Weinreich />

In 1916, she published a catalog of [[Greek language|Greek]] manuscripts in the [[Danish Royal Library]]. The collection had been compiled by [[Daniel Gotthilf Moldenhawer]], who was the chief librarian in the eighteenth century.<ref name=Roth2/> Adler was convinced some of the manuscripts in it had been stolen by Moldenhawer from libraries elsewhere in Europe.<ref name=Roth /> In 1931, she was awarded the [[Tagea Brandt Rejselegat]], a Danish award for women's achievements in art and science.<ref name=Jensen /> At the time of her death, she had made substantial progress towards a first edition of the ''[[Etymologicum Genuinum]]'', a project continued under the direction of Klaus Alpers.<ref name=Roth />

Her work is noted to have been completed in both Rome and Florence in 1913 through the spring of 1914, and later years (1919 and 1920) in Paris, Venice, Oxford, and Florence.<ref name=Roth2/>

== Works ==
*1914: ''Die Commentare des Asklepiades von Myrlea'', Hermes 49.1: 39–46
*1916: ''Catalogue supplémentaire des manuscrits grecs de la Bibliothèque Royale de Copenhague''. 
*1917: ''[[Daniel Gotthilf Moldenhawer|D. G. Moldenhawer]] og hans haandskriftsamling''. Copenhagen http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/manus/780/dan/
*1920: ''Den græske litteraturs skæbne i oldtid og middelalder''. Copenhagen.
*1928–1938: ''Suidae Lexicon''. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. 5 vols.
*1932: ''Die Homervita im Codex Vindobonensis Phil. 39'', Hermes 67.3: 363–366

==References==
{{reflist|refs=

<ref name=Hilden>{{cite web |last=Hilden |first=Adda |title=Ada Adler (1878–1946) |url=http://www.kvinfo.dk/side/597/bio/269/ |website=Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon |date=30 August 2011}}</ref>

<ref name=Pind>{{cite book |last=Pind |first=Joergen L. |title=Edgar Rubin and Psychology in Denmark: Figure and Ground |publisher=Springer |page=40 |year=2014 |isbn=978-3-319-01061-8}}</ref>

<ref name=Roth>{{cite web |last=Roth |first=Catharine P. |title=Ada Sara Adler: The Greatest Woman Philologist Who Ever Lived |url=http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4781 |website=Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies |date=2 November 2020 |access-date=24 March 2016 |archive-date=4 April 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160404114348/http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4781 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

<ref name=Roth2>{{cite book |last=Roth |first=Catharine P. |year=2016 |title=Women classical scholars : unsealing the fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly' |editor-last=Wyles & Hall |contribution=Ada Sara Adler. 'The greatest woman philologist' of her time |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford}}</ref>

<ref name=Calder>{{cite journal |last1=Calder |first1=William |first2=Judith P. |last2=Hallett |author2-link=Judith P. Hallett |title=Introduction: Six North American Women Classicists |journal=Classical World |date=1996–1997 |volume=90 |issue=2–3 |page=83|doi=10.2307/4351923 |jstor=4351923 }}</ref>

<ref name=Weinreich>{{cite journal |last=Weinreich |first=Otto |title=Die Seher Bakis und Glanis, ein Witz des Aristophanes |journal=Archiv für Religionswissenschaft |year=1929 |volume=27 |pages=57–60}}</ref>

<ref name=Jensen>{{cite web |last=Jensen |first=Niels |title=Danske Litteraturpriser |date=15 May 2021 |url=http://www.litteraturpriser.dk/aar/931.htm#aar1931}}</ref>
}}

==External links==
*[http://www.stoa.org/sol/ ''Suda'' On Line]. An on-line edition of the Ada Adler edition with ongoing translations and commentary by registered editors.
*[http://www.kvinfo.dk/side/597/bio/269/origin/170/ 'Ada Adler'] in the Dansk Kvindebiografisk leksikon. Elaborate biography.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adler, Ada}}
[[Category:1878 births]]
[[Category:1946 deaths]]
[[Category:Danish classical scholars]]
[[Category:Danish librarians]]
[[Category:Danish women librarians]]
[[Category:20th-century Danish philologists]]
[[Category:Women encyclopedists]]
[[Category:Jewish Danish writers]]
[[Category:Jewish women writers]]
[[Category:Women classical scholars]]
[[Category:University of Copenhagen alumni]]
[[Category:People from Frederiksberg]]