In Memoriam: Lenora Timm, 1943-2016

Lenora Timm, professor emerita of linguistics and former associate dean of graduate studies at the University of California, Davis, died late last year. She was 73 years old and suffered from cancer.

Dr. Timm was one of the world’s leading experts on Breton, a Celtic language from Brittany in France. She was a founding member and president of the American chapter of the International Committee for the Defense of the Breton Language. The language is spoken by only 200,000 people and is considered severely endangered by UNESCO. Professor Timm was the author of A Modern Breton Political Poet, Anjela Duval: A Biography and an Anthology (Edwin Mellon Press, 1990).

Dr. Timm was fluent in seven languages. She held a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, Davis. After earning her Ph.D., she served on the faculty at the University of California, Davis until her retirement in 2015.