Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 7, 2003|Volume 31, Number 21|Two-Week Issue

Georges May

Former Yale provost, dean
and scholar Georges May dies

Georges May, Sterling Professor Emeritus of French, died on Feb. 28 at his home in New Haven. He was 82 years old.

A leading scholar of French literature, Professor May was dean of Yale College 1963-1971, guiding it during its transition to coeducation and during a period of worldwide campus unrest. Eight years later, May was called upon to serve as provost, the second-highest position in the University administration.

"Georges May's clarity of mind and graciousness of manner gave him brilliant success as an administrator," said President Richard C. Levin. "He delivered the most unwelcome messages with charm and with a twinkle in his eye that made him difficult to counter and impossible to resist. Over the course of four decades Yale drew on him again and again for leadership, wisdom and counsel."

Former Yale President Howard Lamar added: "Georges May was one of the most gracious, civilized, thoughtful scholars, teachers and administrators Yale has ever known. He operated on the highest plane of civility. He had the deepest kind of loyalty to Yale -- a loyalty to its best values, to its culture, and to its ethos, of which he himself was a sterling representative."

Considered one of the premier authorities on French literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, Professor May published 10 books in his field and countless articles in scholarly publications. He is particularly renowned for his work on the French Enlightenment figures encylopedist Denis Diderot and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In 1964 Yale University Press published his edition of a manuscript by Diderot, which he had found in a private collection in Connecticut. Professor May served on an international team of scholars assembling Diderot's complete works and contributed his own edition of "La Religieuse (The Nun)" to the series. His works on Rousseau, written in the 1970s, are still in print and have been reissued many times and translated into several languages. Professor May's edition of the correspondence between Rousseau and Mademoiselle de la Tour was published in France in 1998.

A native of France and a naturalized citizen of the United States, Georges May was born in Paris and attended a lycée there before going on to earn the equivalent of a master's degree at the University of Paris in 1937. He enlisted in the French army in 1939, and after the fall of Paris to the Nazis in 1940, he moved to Montpellier in the south of France. Two years later, after earning another advanced degree (Diplome d'études supérieures) at the University of Montpellier, he crossed the Atlantic via a Portuguese ship to the United States. He soon enlisted in the American Army and from 1943 to 1945 worked in military intelligence for the Office of Strategic Services (precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency) in Washington, D.C.

The French scholar earned his doctorate at the University of Illinois in 1947, one year after he had joined the faculty at Yale as an instructor. He quickly rose through the academic ranks: from assistant professor in 1948, to associate professor in 1951 and to full professor in 1956. He gained one of the highest honors accorded to a Yale faculty member when he was named Sterling Professor in 1971. His service to Yale also included a stint as chair of the Department of French.

Among the many professional associations and learned societies to which Professor May belonged are the American Society for 18th-Century Studies, of which he was president 1974-1975; the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; and the American Philosophical Society. He was a member of the board of directors of the American Council of Learned Societies for 10 years -- serving as its chair for seven of those years. From 1989 to 1992, he was president of the Brussels-based Union Académique Internationale, a society of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. In 1975, as secretary of the Fourth International Congress on the Enlightenment, Professor May planned the event, which attracted 700 scholars from around the world to the Yale campus.

The recipient of numerous honorary degrees, Professor May was made a Chevalier in the French Order of the Legion of Honor in 1971.

In celebration of his 40th year at Yale in 1986, the Visiting Faculty Program organized a day-long symposium. In 1990, friends, colleagues and former students presented him with a "Festschrift," a collection of essays they had written in his honor. In 1992 he was given Yale's prestigious William Clyde DeVane Medal for "distinction in lifetime scholarship and in undergraduate teaching."

"Georges May epitomized the best of western civilization," noted his longtime colleague, John Blum, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History. "He combined the most distinctive and excellent qualities of the French and American spirit. He was a giant of the University in the mid part of the century, an especially beloved dean of Yale College whose grace improved everything, even a difficult faculty meeting."

Professor May was married to the late Martha Corkery of Urbana, Illinois. He is survived by two daughters, Anne May Berwind and Catherine May Dias; a brother, Jacques; and one grandchild.

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Second phase of Broadway revitalization now underway

Kagan awarded National Humanities Medal

Scholarship recognizes vital role of diversity in education

'Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day'

Former Yale provost, dean and scholar Georges May dies

Forum explores strategies for 'Teaching the Tough Stuff'

Yale Rep show offers new and old twists on Shakespeare's . . .

Mapping of peptide may lead to ways of regulating appetite . . .

Exhibit features work by alumnus Joshua Meyer

Goldman-Rakic talk will benefit Fellowship Place