Dempster, Germaine, 1898-1970

Germaine Celestine Henriette Colette was born in France. She emigrated to the United States in 1924 to complete requirements for a Ph.D. in English Literature at Stanford University, California. Her thesis on the dramatic irony of Geoffrey Chaucer, published in 1932, set the stage for years of extensive study about Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales. She later moved to Chicago where she met her husband, Dr. Arthur J. Dempster who was a professor of physics at the University of Chicago. Mrs. Dempster became a noted authority on Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales. She wrote and published numerous articles, reviews and books on the subject. She helped form a research group of other scholars and researchers that conducted extensive studies on Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales. She traveled extensively throughout Europe, India, China and parts of Africa.

During his visit to Stanford University, in 1923, he met Germaine Collette, a Belgian scholar from the University of Liege, who was studying medieval literature at Stanford. Their friendship resulted in marriage in 1926. His wife, the holder of Ph.D. degrees from Liege and Stanford, continued her career beside him and has become an outstanding contributor to Chaucerian criticism. Her researches never failed to arouse the sympathetic interest of her husband, who greatly admired and appreciated her work.