1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rutherford, William Gunion

RUTHERFORD, WILLIAM GUNION (1853–1907), English scholar, was born in Peeblesshire on the 17th of July 1853. He was educated at St Andrews and Oxford, where he graduated in natural science, with a view to following the medical profession, which he abandoned in favour of a scholastic career. From 1883 to 1901 he was headmaster of Westminster school; and his death, on the 19th of July 1907, deprived classical scholarship in England of one of its most brilliant modern representatives. Rutherford devoted special attention to Attic idioms and the language of Aristophanes. His most important work, the New Phrynichus (1882), dealing with the Atticisms of the grammarian, was supplemented by his Babrius (1883), a specimen of the later Greek, which was the chief subject of C. A. Lobeck's earlier commentary (1820) on Phrynichus. His edition (1896–1905), of the Aristophanic scholia from the Ravenna MS. was less successful. Mention may also be made of his Elementary Greek Accidence and Lex Rex, a list of cognate words in Greek, Latin and English.