ANDREW W. MELLON, born in 1855, was a financier, diplomat, and industrialist. Mr. Mellon helped found the Union Trust Company of Pittsburgh, the Gulf Oil Corporation, and the Pittsburgh Coal Company. In 1921, he left the presidency of the Mellon National Bank to become U.S. secretary of the treasury, serving for ten years under presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. He later served as ambassador to Great Britain during 1932-33. Upon his death in 1937, Mr. Mellon left his vast collection of art to create the National Gallery of Art and enough funds for the construction of the building on the Washington, D.C., mall. Four chairs at Hopkins are named for Andrew W. Mellon, two at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, one at the Peabody Conservatory, and one at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities
Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences
Classics
Established in 1967 by Ailsa Mellon Bruce in memory of her father
Held by Karen ni Mheallaigh
KAREN NI MHEALLAIGH is primarily a Hellenist, though her research often leads into Latin texts as well as Greek. Her research is rooted in ancient fiction and the world of the ancient scientific imagination, where fiction intersects with the technical, especially in the realm of astronomy. She is also fascinated by lost texts, imaginary worlds, and the things that are in texts–the furniture of the imagination. She is currently leading two projects with colleagues in the UK (and around the world): the Nautilus Project with Emily Kneebone (Nottingham) on the ancient submarine world; and the Ourania Network for Astronomical Cultures in the Ancient and Premodern Worlds with Jessica Lightfoot (Cambridge/Birmingham). She has written two monographs: Reading Fiction with Lucian: Fakes, Freaks, and Hyperreality (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination: Selenography in Myth, Literature, Science, and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2020). She is also co-editing, with Claire Rachel Jackson and Helena Schmedt, a volume of essays that explore Antonius Diogenes’ novel, The Incredible Things Beyond Thule, within its broader literary and cultural context. This fragmentary Greek novel claims to be a long-lost text, includes a trip to the Moon (possibly the earliest lunar narrative in European literature), and comprises an intriguing mixture of scholarship and fantasy. She received her Ph.D. in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. Her research has been generously supported by a fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK and a Marie Curie fellowship at the Aarhus Institute of Advances Studies (AIAS), Denmark. Before coming to the US, She taught at various universities in the UK (Liverpool, Swansea, and Exeter). She joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 2020, and She is very excited to be here!