The American scholar and educator Harry Austryn Wolfson (1887-1974) spent half a century as Harvard University's Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy. He was a leading historian of medieval philosophy in Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

Harry Austryn Wolfson was born in Austryn, Lithuania, on November 2, 1887. He received a thorough traditional education in the legendary yeshivot of Slobodka, Kovno and Vilna before abject poverty and oppression by the czarist regime caused his family to join the great emigration to America. Following his father in 1903, Wolfson settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he supported himself by part-time Hebrew teaching while he completed the requirements for his new homeland's high school curriculum.

A $250 scholarship, won by a competitive examination, brought Wolfson to Harvard University, where he was to remain with few interruptions for the rest of his life. In 1911 he earned a bachelor's degree, then followed up with a travelling fellowship...