Elizabeth Hill (linguist)

Dame Elizabeth Mary Hill DBE (née Yelizaveta Fyodorovna; Russian Елизаве́та Фёдоровна; 24 October 1900 - 17 December 1996) was a Russian-born British academic linguist. In addition to a career with the London University School of Slavonic Studies, she was also the course director of the JSSL, a UK Government training programme to produce linguists and interpreters of Russian, for military and intelligence purposes.^[1][2][3]

Background

Hill was born on 24 October 1900 in the Russian city of St Petersburg. She came from a prosperous Anglo-Russian family, her mother Russian, her father an English businessman. The family fled from Russia in 1917 and moved to London.^[3]

Early Life & Career

Hill worked in several language teaching jobs before entering University College London, where she gained a First-class degree in Russian in 1924 and a PhD in 1928. Her first university appointment was in 1936, when she went to Cambridge as a Lecturer. During World War II Hill trained military recruits in Russian. In 1948, she was appointed as the first Professor of Slavonic Studies at Cambridge. She held this position until 1968.^[3]

Post JSSL Career

Between 1968 to 1970, Hill served as Andrew Mellon Professor of Slavic Languages in Pittsburgh.

Personal life

In 1984, Hill Married Stojan Veljkovic, but the marriage was dissolved in 1995. She was noted for a 'capacity for long-standing friendships', especially with Doris Mudie, whom Hill first met in the late 1920s in London. Initially, Hill and her family were greatly helped by the successful Mudies, though as Hill's fortunes improved those of Doris declined. In 1936, at the same time as Hill had gained her first lectureship, Mudie was 'penniless' and had suffered the first in a series of nervous breakdowns.^[4] By the late 1960s Doris had suffered several strokes and needed constant nursing.^[3]

Further reading

• Elliott, Geoffrey, & Shukman, Harold. Secret Classrooms: An Untold Story of the Cold War, St Ermin's Press, 2003. ISBN 1-903608-13-9

References

1. Anthony Cross, ‘Hill, Dame Elizabeth Mary (1900–1996)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 20 April 2013
2. ‘HILL, Dame Elizabeth (Mary)’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2012 ; online edn, Nov 2012 accessed 20 April 2013
3. Briggs, A D P (6 Jan 1997). "Obituary of Dame Professor Elizabeth Hill". The Independent. The Independent. Retrieved April 19, 2013.
4. Elliott & Shukman, p. 17-18