The Cherniss Library is a unique collection of more than 7,000 volumes devoted to ancient Greek philosophy. The books were the property of Harold Cherniss, a distinguished scholar in the field, and were acquired by the CUNY Graduate Center, with the assistance of an anonymous donor, shortly after Cherniss's death in 1987. About two-thirds of the books are now part of the Mina Reese Library and are included in the CUNY+ online catalog. The rest belong to the Ph.D. Program in Classics and are being cataloged by the Ph.D. Program in Classics at the Graduate Center. The cataloging is an ongoing process and will take several years to complete, but you can access the volumes online by clicking on the following link:
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/classics/checkout/
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Harold Fredrik Cherniss (1904-1987) was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, and was both an undergraduate and graduate student at UC Berkeley from which he received a Ph.D. in Greek, Latin and Sanskrit in 1930. He taught at Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and the University of California before joining the faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton where he remained for the rest of his career. An overview of his contribution to the study of ancient philosophy can be found in G. Vlastos’ review of Harold Cherniss: Selected Papers, L. Taran (ed.). Leiden 1977 in AJP 99.4 (1978) 537-543.