About Dr R J E Thompson

Dr Rupert Thompson is a University Lecturer in Classical Philology and Linguistics in the Faculty of Classics in the University of Cambridge and Director of the Computer Assisted Text Reading Project. He is a Fellow of Selwyn College, where he is Director of Studies in Classics, a Tutor, and the Fellows' Steward.

Research interests include historical and comparative linguistics, ancient Greek dialectology and sociolinguistics, and the language and epigraphy of Mycenaean Greek and its writing system, Linear B. I am not interested in so-called ‘decipherments’ of Linear A or the Phaistos Disc which involve little green men, the Loch Ness monster, or any other psychic phenomenon—so please don't send them to me!

Here are my contact details.

What's New

Photographs of my recent trip to Turkey with a group of college alumni are now online.

And I've been experimenting with the all-singing, all-dancing Google Maps API to produce interactive maps. There's a sample on my Contact Details page, although the obvious application is for spenditondrink.com.

Microsoft have released Internet Explorer 7. It seems quite good. I initially had problems with it crashing immediately on loading a page. I've tracked this down to a problem with Google Desktop. Upgrade to the latest version of Google Desktop to fix it.

Elsewhere in the news

Some random news stories which have tickled my fancy...

Geologists investigate Trojan battlefield [From the BBC] Homer's description of the Trojan battlefield in his classic poem the Iliad is accurate, say scientists. More... Beer, curry and pizza are health foods! [From the BBC] Beer lowers cholesterol, curry stops you going senile, and pizza stops you getting mouth cancer. No wonder winkers are so healthy! More... Classicist recreates naked olympics [From the BBC] Academic gets his kit off to prove you can run in the nude. Shocker! More... Learning languages boosts the brain [From the BBC]: Learning a second language boosts brain-power, scientists believe. More...

Yet Another Atlantis Discovery [BBC:] American researchers claim to have found convincing evidence that locates the site of the lost kingdom of Atlantis off the coast of Cyprus. More... X-rays reveal Archimedes' secrets [BBC:] X-ray techniques are being used to read 'lost' works by the Greek mathematician Aristotle preserved in a palimpsest Orthodox prayer book. More... Sentamu slams public atheism The Archbishop of York claims that those of us who oppose sate religion have an 'illiberal faith position', whatever that means, and says that Christians should be more active in ensuring that 'their' values are not removed from public life. He does not appear to say why Christianity should receive this privileged position. The church is such a liberal institution itself, after all... More... Pringles are not the work of Satan A US court has actually ruled that Pringles are not associated with Satan, and that the jolly figure on their logo is not the Prince of Darkness himself. How much time and money has been wasted on this nonsense? Has the entire world now gone mad, or is it just the American and Christian parts of it? More...