Forster, Leonard Wilson, b. 1913

Walter Horace Bruford (1894-1988), Professor of German, University of Edinburgh, 1929-51, and Schrder Professor of German, Cambridge, 1951-61; Leonard Wilson Forster, 1913-1997, Schrder Professor of German, 1961-79.

Leonard Wilson Forster (1913-1997), German scholar; Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge from 1937; Professor of German, University College London, 1950-61; and Schrder Professor of German, 1961-79.

Leonard Wilson Forster (1913-1997), German scholar, was born in London on 30 March 1913. He attended Marlborough College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, before studying in Germany and Switzerland. During the war, he worked on code-breaking at Bletchley Park, 1941-1945, and on special duties in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, 1945-1946. Forster became Professor of German at University College London in 1950, and Schrder Professor at Cambridge in 1961. He retired in 1979, and died in Cambridge on 18 April 1997.

Robert Auty (1914-1978), philologist, was born at Rotherham, Yorkshire, on 10 October 1914, and educated at Rotherham Grammar School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He became Cambridge University lecturer in German, 1945, and in German and Czech, 1948, and was lecturer in Slavonic studies, 1957-1962. Auty was a Fellow and college lecturer in modern languages at Selwyn College, Cambridge, 1950-1962. From 1965 he was Professor of Comparative Slavonic Philology, Oxford University, and a Fellow of Brasenose College. He died on 18 August 1978.