The men began to collaborate on the progressive decipherment of Linear B, writing Documents in Mycenean Greek in 1956, following a controversial first paper three years earlier.

In July that year he heard a radio broadcast by Michael Ventris about his work on Linear B and offered his help as 'a mere philologist'. After finishing his degree, he joined the staff of the Oxford Latin Dictionary before beginning a Classics lectureship at Cambridge in 1952. In 1950 he published his first scholarly work, an edition of The Medical Works of Hippocrates, co-authored with his cousin, William Neville Mann, a distinguished physician. They stopped working actively on the problem owing to a lack of published data from inscriptions. They were already aware at the time of the work of Michael Ventris. While studying at Corpus Christi College, he attempted, with some of his fellow students, to use cryptographic methods to decipher the 'Minoan Linear Script B'. Īfter the end of the war in 1945, he returned to his studies at Cambridge, graduating with First Class Honours in Classics Part II, with a distinction in his special subject, linguistics. In 1944, he was transferred to Bletchley Park ('Station X'), learned Japanese, and worked on reading the encoded messages sent by the Japanese naval representatives in Stockholm and Berlin.

Chadwick deduced from some R/T traffic meant to be handled at Bletchley Park that a British submarine had been sunk near Taranto. In 1942 he was sent ashore at Alexandria for an interview by the Chief of Naval Intelligence and was immediately assigned to intelligence duties in Egypt and promoted to Temporary Sub Lieutenant in the RNVR. At first he served in the Mediterranean as an ordinary seaman aboard the light cruiser HMS Coventry and saw action when his ship was torpedoed by an Italian submarine and dive-bombed. He was educated at St Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.Ĭhadwick volunteered for the Royal Navy in 1940 after completing the first year of his classics course at Cambridge. John Chadwick was born at 18 Christ Church Road, Mortlake, Surrey, on, the younger son of Margaret Pamela ( née Bray) and Fred Chadwick, civil servant. John Chadwick, FBA ( – 24 November 1998) was an English linguist and classical scholar who was most notable for the decipherment, with Michael Ventris, of Linear B.Įarly life, education and wartime service East Sheen, Richmond-upon-Thames, England

The Mycenaean World by John Chadwick