John Fraser, 1882 - 1945, Jesus Professor of Celtic, Oxford University

Francis Carney Diack Francis Carney Diack was born in Aberdeen in 1865. He was educated in Banchory and Aberdeen, graduating from the University of Aberdeen, MA 1887. He taught for a short time after graduation, before being appointed in 1892, as Assistant in the University Library and the Department of English, posts which he resigned in 1898, due to ill-health. He developed an interest in Scottish Gaelic, and through extensive and thorough field work became an authority upon the origin and development of Gaelic place names in the North East Highlands, contributing 2 articles on The Toponomy of Pictland to the Revue Celtique, (1921 - 1924), with other articles published in the Transactions of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, Scottish Gaelic Studies and the local press. He was precise and meticulous in his work, and, on account of his scholarly caution, only a fraction of this research appeared in print during his lifetime. After his death, the Third Spalding Club redressed the balance with the publication of The inscriptions of Pictland: an essay on the sculptured and inscribed stones of the north-east and north of Scotland, with other writings and collections, edited by William M. Alexander and John MacDonald (Aberdeen: Third Spalding Club, 1944), which is comprehensive in its coverage of his work on the inscribed stones of Scotland, and also contains much of the substance of his place name collections. He died at Banchory, in Sept 1939.

For an appreciation of his life and works see Aberdeen University Review, 27 (1939-1940), 56-57; and The inscriptions of Pictland: an essay on the sculptured and inscribed stones of the north-east and north of Scotland, with other writings and collections, edited by William M. Alexander and John MacDonald (Aberdeen: Third Spalding Club, 1944), pp vii-x.

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