Obituary: Professor A. N. Allott ; Scholar Who Defined the Discipline of African Law

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IT IS given to a few legal scholars to survey and successfully cultivate an entirely new field, the length and breadth of a continent. Yet A. N. Allott's successive titles as Lecturer (1948) and Reader (1960) in, and Professor (1964) of, African Law at London University aptly designated the exceptional scope of his scholarship.

Antony Nicholas Allott was born in 1924 in Jump, near Barnsley, and educated at Downside School. Second World War service with the King's African Rifles provoked in him a sympathetic concern for Africa and thereby determined the future course of his life. In 1948 he took a first in Jurisprudence at New College, Oxford, and was immediately …