Obituary: Professor Homer A. Thompson

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THE AMERICAN excavations of the centre of ancient Athens (the agora), which are still in progress, began in 1931, and a major figure for 50 years of this time was Homer A. Thompson. He was one of the first two "Agora Fellows", the Field Director from 1947 to 1967, and a leading classical archaeologist of the 20th century.

Homer Thompson spent his undergraduate years at the University of British Columbia, transferred to the University of Michigan for his doctoral studies, and in the late 1920s moved to Athens and began his life's work in the city. The area where it was thought that the ancient agora lay had after long negotiations been acquired by the American School of …