Professor of Indo-Iranian Languages
Centurion, 1908–1937
Born 9 February 1862 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Died 8 August 1937 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Buried Woodlawn Cemetery
, Bronx, New York
Proposed by Edward Delavan Perry and John B. Pine
Elected 5 December 1908 at age forty-six
Archivist’s Note: Grandson of A. V. Williams
Proposer of:
Seconder of:
Century Memorial
A. V. Williams Jackson was an outstanding scholar in what we nowadays look upon as a remote field of knowledge—the languages, literatures, religions and institutions of the Indo-Iranian peoples, particularly those of Persia. He spent fully fifty years at work in this field, and cultivated it in so extraordinary a fashion that in Persia itself, to say nothing of Europe and America, he was considered a foremost authority. When he went to Bombay or to Teheran, he was hailed and treated as a high visiting celebrity would have been. After the War he was received by the King of England, in order that Jackson might give in person what everyone looked upon as the most authoritative report on what was going on behind the scenes in India and Persia.
Jackson was as modest as he was learned. He never advertised to the general public the mass of his learning. He combined with his scholarship great charm of manner and fine teaching power. All those who were his students at any time during the half-century worshipped him. One of his college associates recalls that the Class-day historian of Commencement week at Columbia foreshadowed Jackson’s career in the poetic tribute that
“Abraham Valentine Williams Jackson
Is the only man who ever got ‘max’ on
Latin and Greek and accursed Anglo-Saxon.”
Alexander Dana Noyes
1938 Century Association Yearbook
