{{Short description|American pathologist and linguist (1912–1998)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=May 2024}} {{Infobox person | name = Frank Siebert | image = Frank Siebert (1912–1998).jpg | birth_name = Frank Thomas Siebert, Jr. | birth_date = {{birth date|1912|04|02}} | birth_place = Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|1998|01|23|1912|04|02}} | death_place = Bangor, Maine, U.S. | burial_place = West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania | occupation = Pathologist | education = {{ubl|Haverford College (B.S.)|University of Pennsylvania Medical School (M.D.)}} | spouse = {{marriage|Marion Paterson|1956|1964|end=div}} | children = 2 }} '''Frank Thomas Siebert Jr.''' (April 2, 1912{{snd}}January 23, 1998) was an American pathologist who became a leading authority on Algonquian languages, including Penobscot, for which he compiled a dictionary.<ref name=Goddard/><ref name=Gregory/><ref name=McCorison/><ref name=Singer/>
==Early life== Siebert was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 2, 1912, and spent the first five years of his life in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1917, his family moved first to Philadelphia and then to Merion Station, Pennsylvania, where he grew up.{{r|Goddard|McCorison}}
He attended Haverford College, studying chemistry and graduating in 1934. He first met Penobscot communities in 1932 when he was nineteen years old.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Teeter |first=Karl van Duyn |date=1998 |title="Siebert As Algonquianist" |url=https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal/vol37/iss3/7 |journal=Maine History |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=90–93}}</ref>
==Professional career== Siebert started as a medical pathologist before leaving medicine to focus on linguistics. He studied medicine at the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania graduating in 1938. Apart from his medical studies at Penn, he attended the linguistic talks and seminars given by Franz Boas at Columbia and Edward Sapir at Yale, while working to attain his M.D. degree at Penn. He was further influenced by anthropologist Frank Speck in his interest in Native American languages.<ref name=Goddard/>
In 1936, he was mentored by Mary R. Haas of Berkeley, when they traveled together to Maine for two and a half weeks to document Penobscot language and music. There, Hass developed an annotation and documentation system for documenting Penobscot pitches and musical traditions.<ref name=":0" />
He subsequently worked on projects to reconstitute Virginia Algonquian (Powhatan) based on previously collected William Strachey transcriptions from the early seventeenth century. He developed a phonological system for the language, including a "91 etymological vocabulary that spells out 263 English glosses" as well as a subclassification of early Eastern Algonquian, and naming at least fifty dialects.<ref name=":0" /> In “The Original home of the Proto-Algonquian people,”<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Siebert |first=Frank T. |date=1967 |title="The original home of the Proto-Algonquian people." |journal=Algonquian Papers-Archive |volume=1}}</ref> Siebert explored vocabularies for flora and fauna, and also made arguments for Algonquian people's place of origin.<ref name=":0" /> He worked to document Penobscot language, producing a two-volume draft Penobscot dictionary in 1984 (1,235 pages with nearly 15,000 entries).<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Siebert |first=Frank T. |date=1980 |title="The Penobscot Dictionary Project: Preferences and Problems of Format, Presentation, and Entry" |journal=Algonquian Papers-Archive |volume=11}}</ref>
In 1969, he became a Guggenheim fellow.<ref name="Guggenheim" />
In 1980, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the creation of a Penobscot dictionary, a project that he had been working on since at least 1968.<ref name=Gregory/><ref name=McCorison/>
Ives Goddard of the Smithsonian Institution called Siebert "clearly the most brilliant and most competent avocational linguist working on Native American languages that there has ever been, hands down."<ref name=Gregory/> Karl Teeter, commenting on Siebert, called him "the dean of Algonquian linguistics".<ref name=McCorison/>
==Personal life== In 1956, he married Marion Paterson, with whom he had two daughters. The marriage broke down in 1961, and divorce followed in 1964.<ref name=Goddard/>
He was described as an eccentric and recluse. He collected rare books.<ref name=Goddard/>
==Death== Siebert died in Bangor, Maine, on January 23, 1998, at the age of 85, after suffering for several years from cancer of the urinary tract and ensuing complications. He was buried with his mother and father at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.{{r|Goddard|Bangor}}
Following his death, his collection of books and antiquarian items was sold at Sotheby's for $12.5 million, which was split between his two daughters. His dictionary and field-work materials were bequeathed to the American Philosophical Society.{{r|Gregory}}<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Fitti |first1=Charles |last2=Kendall |first2=Daythal |last3=Miller |first3=Michael |date=2014 |title=Frank Siebert Papers |url=https://as.amphilsoc.org/repositories/2/resources/2938 }}</ref>
==References== <references>
<ref name=Bangor>{{cite news|title=Obituaries and Funerals: Dr. Frank T. Siebert Jr.|url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-bangor-daily-news-obituary-for-frank/136928000/|newspaper=Bangor Daily News|date=January 24, 1998|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240503164735/https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-bangor-daily-news-obituary-for-frank/136928000/|archive-date=May 3, 2024|url-status=live}}</ref>
<ref name=Goddard>{{cite journal|last=Goddard|first=Ives|author-link=Ives Goddard|year=1998|title=Frank T. Siebert, Jr. (1912–1998)|journal=Anthropological Linguistics|volume=40|number=3|pages=481–498|jstor=30028650}}</ref>
<ref name=Gregory>{{cite magazine|last=Gregory|first=Alice|date=April 12, 2021|title=How Did a Self-Taught Linguist Come to Own an Indigenous Language?|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/19/how-did-a-self-taught-linguist-come-to-own-an-indigenous-language|magazine=The New Yorker|archive-url=https://archive.today/20210416053334/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/19/how-did-a-self-taught-linguist-come-to-own-an-indigenous-language|archive-date=April 16, 2021|url-status=live}}</ref>
<ref name=Guggenheim>{{cite web|title=Frank T. Siebert Jr.|url= https://www.gf.org/fellows/frank-t-siebert-jr/|publisher=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230327202035/https://www.gf.org/web/20230327202035/https://www.gf.org/fellows/frank-t-siebert-jr/|archive-date=March 27, 2023|url-status=live}}</ref>
<ref name=McCorison>{{cite journal|last=McCorison|first=Marcus A.|year=1998|title=Obituaries: Frank Thomas Siebert, Jr.|url=https://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44525150.pdf|journal=Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society|volume=108|pages=299–304|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150910143124/https://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44525150.pdf|archive-date=September 10, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref>
<ref name=Singer>{{cite journal|last=Singer|first=Richard B.|year=1998|title=Frank Siebert: Then, And More Than "Forty Years On"|url=https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1260&context=mainehistoryjournal|journal=Maine History|volume=37|number=3|pages=71–77|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806223802/https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1260&context=mainehistoryjournal|archive-date=August 6, 2020|url-status=live}}</ref>
</references>
{{DEFAULTSORT:Siebert, Frank}} Category:1912 births Category:1998 deaths Category:20th-century American lexicographers Category:American antiquarians Category:American pathologists Category:Haverford College alumni Category:Linguists of Algic languages Category:People from Louisville, Kentucky Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:20th-century American science writers