William Rollo (academic)

This article is about the South African linguist and classicist. For the British general, see Bill Rollo.

William Rollo
Principal of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Interim
In office November 1953 – December 1955
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Walter Adams
Personal details
Born	1892 Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Died	1960 (aged 67–68) Grahamstown, Cape Province, South Africa
Alma mater	University of Glasgow (MA) Leiden University (DLitt)

William "Willie" Rollo Jr. was a Scottish-born South African academic.

History

He was born in 1892 in Glasgow and graduated from the University of Glasgow with an MA in classics in 1915. After the war he completed his DLitt in linguistics at Leiden University. His thesis was on the Marquina dialect of the Basque language. He immigrated to South Africa in 1925, where he was professor of classics, then Head of the Classics Department and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Cape Town until 1953, when he was invited to take up the post of interim principal of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, now the University of Zimbabwe.

Rollo was a skilled linguist. During the Second World War he taught himself Japanese so he could teach the rudiments of the language to South African pilots who were going to fight in the Far East.

Death

He died in 1960 in Grahamstown, while teaching classics at Rhodes University.