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Fredrick Malcolm Combellack (1906-2002) was born May 30 1906 in Placerville California to William and Marry Dunston Combellack. Beginning his higher education at Stanford University, Combellack would then go on to receive his masters at the University of Oxford in 1932 and his PHD at the University of California in 1936.

Combellack started his career in education at the University of Oregon in 1937, serving in the department of Classics. Through his career at the University, Combellack taught Greek and Latin language and literature. Through the Department of Classics he taught courses such as Plato’s Socratic Dialogues and Homer’s Iliad, Cicero and Vergil, Greek Tragedy, Greek Historians and Comedy, Plato and Aristotle and Latin Literature of the Augustan and Silver Age, among others. Combellack stayed at the University of Oregon for 40 years, serving as department head and then finally fully retiring in 1977 after teaching two additional years as a professor emeritus.

Combellack’s main study focused on the Work of Homer. His articles mostly center on the examination of the Odyssey. As an expert in this area, Combellack wrote a magnitude of reviews of others scholars’ works on Homer. Additionally he wrote a survey on Homer for The Classical Weekly and acted as part of the John Smith Guggenheim fellowship to assist in research on a study of Homer’s style and Literary Techniques.

After his full retirement in 1977, Combellack continued to live in Eugene, Oregon with his wife Rose, who he had married in England during his time at Oxford. Combellack would live until the age of 95, dying on February 27, 2002.