ULLENDORF, EDWARD

ULLENDORF, EDWARD (1920– ), British linguist. Ullendorf, who received his schooling in Germany and his university education in Jerusalem, served with the British in Eritrea and Ethiopia during and after World War II (1942–46) and was an assistant secretary in the Palestine government in 1947–48. He then took up a research post at Oxford; in 1950 he became reader in Semitic languages at St. Andrews University, Scotland. In 1959 he was appointed professor of Semitic languages and literatures at Manchester University and in 1964 professor of Ethiopian studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, retiring in 1982. Ullendorf's service in Eritrea and Ethiopia led him to concentrate his research on studies of the Semitic languages of those areas. Among his published works are The Definite Article in the Semitic Languages (1941), Exploration and Study in Abyssinia (1945), The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia (1955), The Ethiopians (1959), and The Challenge of Amharic (1965). He was chairman of the Anglo-Ethiopian Society.