John D. MacIsaac

John D. MacIsaac 

1944-2011

John Douglas MacISAAC conceived a love of the ancient world while a boy. He was born 8 November 1944, the son of an Air Force officer who was stationed in Athens when John was of high-school age. John received his secondary education at the American Academy (ACS) in Athens and he graduated from Fordham with a major in classics. When he graduated, the Vietnam Conflict was growing and John joined the Air Force Reserve, flying over 100 missions as a navigator/bombardier. He retired from the Reserve in 1996 as a lieutenant colonel. After active duty, he married Liane Houghtalin and began graduate study in archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned the MA. He then moved to the Johns Hopkins, where he received a Fulbright Scholarship to work on his dissertation, “The Location of the Republican Mint of Rome and the Topography of the Arx of the Capitoline” (1987). He received the Ph.D. and taught at a number of institutions in Italy and the United States and at the University of Mary Washington from 1993 to 2007. In 2005 he published Excavations at Nemea. 3, The Coins co-edited with Robert C. Knapp (Berkeley: University of California Press). He died 19 November 2011 in Fredericksburg, VA, after a long illness.

— Ward Briggs