WHITNEY. William Dwight, American philologist, brother of J I) Whitney (q.v.): b Northampton. Mass.. 9 Feb. 1827; d New Haven, 9 June 1894. He wasted from Williams College in 1845, Yak ie 1849-50, and then went to Germany, where tr continued his philological and Sanskrn studies under Bopp at Berlin and Roth at Tubingen. He was appointed to the professorship of Sanskrn at Yale in 1854, and in 1870 be received in addition the chair of comparative philology. posts which he retained till his death. In 18•6 he published, with Roth, an edition of the Atharva-Veda Sanhita, and in 1862 issued at New Haven an edition, with translation and notes, of the 'Atharva-Veda His 'Language and the Study of Language' (1867) was an admirable exposition of the main principles of comparative philology. His other published works include 'A Compendious Gel man Grammar' (1869); 'A German Reader' (1869); an edition of the 'Taittiriya-Priti 9-ikhya' (1872), for which he was awarded the Bopp medal of the Berlin Academy; 'Oriental and Linguistic Studies' (1872); 'The Life and Growth of Language'(1875); 'Essentials .1
English Grammar' (1877); 'A Sanskrit Gram mar' (1879); The Roots, Verb Forms, ard Primary Derivatives of the Sanskrit Lan guage' (1885), a supplement to the grammar; 'A Practical French Grammar' (1&46). He was a contributor to Bohtlingic and Roth'. great 'Sanskrit Dictionary' (1853-75) and editor-in-chief of 'The Century Dictionary of the English Language' (1889-91). He was elected a member of the American Oriental Society in 1850 and wrote more than half of the contents of Vols. 6-12 of the 'Journal' of that society. For a complete bibliography of his work, consult the 19th volume of the 'Journal of the American Oriental Society' (1897).