Biography

James Kent Farmer Anthony was born in 1921 in Edinburgh and attended Boroughmuir School, after which he spent seven years in the army from 1939-1946. After WWII, he worked as a telephone engineer for the Post Office before accepting a job as Technician of the new Phonetics Department of the University of Edinburgh in October 1948. He was responsible for sourcing, experimenting with, and implementing much of the audio technology that the University would use in its linguistic research. As such, he was sought out by some of the university scholars working in traditional languages and lore, including the Gaelic scholar Derick Thomson. Some of the recordings made in this capacity would spur the creation of the School of Scottish Studies in the early 1950s, with James further assisting fieldworkers in learning how to make their own recordings. James went on to become Senior Technician in 1951, Research Fellow in the 1960s, Lecturer in 1971 and Senior Lecturer in 1974, before retiring from the Department of Linguistics in 1984.