Adam Jack Aitken (1921–1998), Jack Aitken to his friends, A. J. Aitken to his readers, was the leading authority on the Scots language during his lifetime. In 1948 he was appointed Assistant to Sir William Craigie, the Editor of A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, and became Editor on Craigie’s retirement in 1956. Jack was highly respected internationally as a lexicographer and acted as adviser or consultant to numerous projects, including the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Sanskrit on Historical Principles, and the Middle English Dictionary.
However, the achievement of which he was most proud was that, through his teaching at Edinburgh, he effectively created Scots as a university subject.
In many areas his work forms the foundation, and remains relevant to present-day researchers. His reconstruction of Older Scots phonology, and his descriptions of orthographic variation and stylistics in Older Scots, are particularly important, and likewise his description of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule. His thinking on social variation in Modern Scots has also been influential.
A photo of Jack taken by his friend, the late Dick Bailey, who wrote:
A. J. Aitken "comes na intil the bucht at the yett, but sclims in somegate else" (John 10.2 trans. Lorimer).
Courtesy of the late Angus McIntosh.