Esperantist Professor Leaves University for Literary Life

George B. Viles
Nia dua prezidanto

The American Esperanto Association made a point in response to claims that they were wholly a Boston organization that their president, George B. Viles, was a professor at the Ohio State University. But in all truth, OSU couldn’t claim that their Professor of Germanic Language and Literature was a native son of the Buckeye State. Professor Viles was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, not far from Boston.

It’s not clear if the founders of the American Esperanto Association knew they had elected a fellow Bay Stater as their head. Viles had graduated from Harvard in 1892, receiving an A.M. in 1896, and from there went on to receive his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1902. He then spent two years studying at Leipzig, before beginning at Ohio State University in 1904. He was at Leipzig at the same time that Wilhelm Ostwald was at the greatest point of his enthusiasm for Esperanto, and at a time when Ostwald was preparing for his trip to the United States, where he would lecture at Viles alma mater, Harvard.

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