G. M. Hirst

Who was G. M. Hirst?

Gertrude Mary Hirst, better known as G. M. Hirst, was an English-American classicist.

Hirst was born in Yorkshire, the sister of journalist Francis Hirst and history writer Margaret Hirst. She attended Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1887 to 1891, then moved to the United States to become a teacher at the Louisville Female Seminary, where she worked from 1891 to 1901. She meanwhile did graduate work at Columbia under Edward Delavan Perry and Mortimer Lamson Earle, earning a master's degree in 1900 and Ph.D. in 1901. Upon earning her Ph.D., she became a lecturer in Greek and Latin at Barnard College, a position she held from 1901 through her retirement in 1943. She died in Croton, New York, in 1962.

She published a number of papers in classics journals, mainly commentaries on Roman authors. Her most influential publication was her 1926 proposal that Livy was born in 64 BC, rather than the traditional date of 59 BC; this claim would later also be advocated by Ronald Syme.