Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Waldstein, Charles

WALDSTEIN, Charles, archæologist, b. in New York city, 30 March, 1856. He studied at Columbia in 1871-’3 and at the University of Heidelberg in 1873-’5, where he received the degree of Ph. D. on completing his course. In 1876 he was at Leipsic, but in October of that year he went to London, where he studied in the British museum. He delivered a course of art lectures in the museum during that winter, then spent the greater part of the years 1878-’9 in Italy and Greece, and was present at the German excavation at Olympia. On his return to England in 1880 he delivered lectures in various places, becoming university lecturer in classical archaeology in Cambridge in that year. His influence was soon felt by the art students there, and in 1882 he was made “reader” in Greek art in the university (a new form of professorship). He turned his attention toward founding a new archæological school, and for its purposes a museum of art has been created in connection with the Fitzwilliam museum, of which latter institution he has since 1883 been a director. In 1888, while still holding his appointments in Cambridge, he was called to the directorship of the American school of archæology at Athens. His reputation has been gained chiefly by his discoveries, among which are that the so-called “Apollos” are simply athletes, the identification of a head found in the Louvre as the work of Pheidias, and that of a Hermes in Ephesian silver-work on a patera from Bernay in France. In April, 1883, he delivered a course of lectures before the Royal institute of Great Britain, and in 1886 he lectured at Columbia college, New York city. The honorary degrees of A. M. in 1882 and of L. H. D. in 1887 were conferred on him by Columbia, and those of A. M. in 1882 and Litt. D. in 1887 by Cambridge. Dr. Waldstein is one of the foreign editors of the “American Journal of Archæology,” and he has contributed on his specialties to journals on both sides of the Atlantic. He has also published “The Balance of Emotion and Intellect” (London, 1878) and “Essays on the Art of Pheidias” (1885).