Gordon MacDonald Kirkwood, the Whiton Professor of Classics emeritus and a renowned scholar of the ancient world, died at his Ithaca home Jan. 16. He was 90 years old.

Kirkwood played an instrumental role in shaping Cornell's Department of Classics, which he joined as an instructor in 1946. "In addition to being a world-renowned scholar of Greek literature, influential teacher and pioneer of courses in translation, as department chair Gordon was the first to conceive of classics as embracing archaeology, historical linguistics and contemporary approaches to literature," says classics chair Jeffrey Rusten. "Our department today is unthinkable without his vision."

Kirkwood chaired the classics department from 1963 to 1972. During his tenure he worked to establish an endowment in honor of Prescott W. Townsend, a classicist and Cornell alumnus, that today brings distinguished scholars to campus to lecture and supports predoctoral fellowships and travel grants for classics graduate students.

Kirkwood's 1958 book "A Study of Sophoclean Drama" won the Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Philology Association, an organization that elected Kirkwood president in 1981. He won Cornell's Clark Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1978 and held fellowships from the Ford and Guggenheim foundations, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a member of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States and Phi Beta Kappa.

After his retirement in 1984, Kirkwood wrote a history of his department, "The Classics at Cornell," published in 1999. His other works include "A Short Guide to Classical Mythology" (1960) and "Early Greek Monody" (1974). He edited "Poetry and Poetics from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance: Studies in Honor of James Hutton" (1975) and "Selections from Pindar" (1981).

Kirkwood is survived by his wife, Patricia M. Frueh '38, A.M. '39, and three children.