Harry Austryn Wolfson
Harry Austryn Wolfson (November 2, 1887 – September 19, 1974) was an American scholar, philosopher, and historian at Harvard University, and the first chairman of a Judaic Studies Center in the United States.Being the first Judaica scholar to progress through an entire career at a top-tier university (Mendes-Flohr 1998), in Wolfson is also represented the fulfillment of the goals of the 19th-century Wissenschaft des Judentums movement.[2] His only absences were the years 1912–1914, when he held a traveling fellowship from Harvard which enabled him to study and do research in Europe, and some months in 1918 when he was conscripted into the Army, and together with Norbert Wiener received basic training at Fort Slocum, New York, and was then transferred to the Adjutant General's Office in Washington, D.C.. Wolfson was offered an appointment as annual instructor in Jewish philosophy and Literature at Harvard University in 1915, provided he could find outside funding for his salary, which judges Julian Mack and Irving Lehman took responsibility for.He received honorary degrees from 10 different universities (Twersky 1975), and was a founding member and president of the American Academy for Jewish Research.[3] About him Twersky (1975) writes, "He was reminiscent of an old-fashioned gaon, transposed into a modern university setting, studying day and night, resisting presumptive attractions and distractions, honors and chores, with a tenacity which sometimes seemed awkward and antisocial."