Brunilde Ridgway facts for kids

Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway (14 November 1929 – 19 October 2024) was an Italian-American archaeologist and specialist in ancient Greek sculpture.

Life

The daughter of Giuseppe Sismondo, a career army officer, and Maria (Lombardo) Sismondo, Ridgway was born in Chieti; as a young child she lived in Sicily and then in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where her father had been stationed during World War II. When her father was captured by the British in World War II and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Kenya, she secured a job as a telephone operator at police headquarters in Asmara (Eritrea) where she learned to speak English.

After World War II, she studied classics at the University of Messina, where she obtained her degree in classics in 1953. An archaeology scholarship and Fulbright Travel Grant allowed her to continue her studies at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she came under the tutelage of Rhys Carpenter. At the end of her MA, she wrote her thesis on Archaic sculpture at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She received her Ph.D. in 1958 and returned as a teacher to Bryn Mawr, where she spent most of her career.

In 1977, she was named Rhys Carpenter Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, a post she held until her retirement in 1994. In 1988, she won the Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1993. She married physical therapist Henry W. Ridgway in 1958.

Ridgway died on 19 October 2024 in Haverford, Pennsylvania.