Richard Hope Simpson

Richard Hope Simpson
Born	(1930-05-12)12 May 1930[1] United Kingdom
Died	11 November 2016(2016-11-11) (aged 86) Kingston, Ontario
Nationality	British
Occupation	Academic
Spouse	Jennifer Hope Simpson (née Crick) ​ ​ (m. 1958)​
Children	2
Academic background
Alma mater	St John's College, Oxford (M.A.), University of London (Ph.D.)
Thesis	The topography of Mycenaean Greece in relation to the Achaean section of the Homeric Catalogue of the Ships
Academic work
Discipline	Classical archaeology
Sub-discipline	Archaeological survey, Mycenaean archaeology
Institutions	University of Birmingham, University of Toronto, Queen's University at Kingston

Richard "Dick" Hope Simpson (1930–2016) was a British Classical archaeologist, known for his work in archaeological survey and the study of Mycenaean Greece. For most of his career, he taught at Queen's University at Kingston in Kingston, Ontario.

A leading figure in Greek field survey throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Hope Simpson played a major role in the University of Minnesota Messenia Expedition and in the production of several of the key gazetteers of Mycenaean civilisation in Greece. His work was significant in allowing an understanding of Mycenaean states, particularly in Messenia, beyond the relatively small number of large, well-known and excavated sites. In the 1960s, his projects pioneered new methods of extensive survey, including the use of remote sensing via aerial photography.

Hope Simpson believed in the essential historicity of the Homeric epics and produced several works, including his doctoral thesis, attempting to locate the toponyms of the Iliad with the archaeological sites known from Mycenaean Greece. The archaeologist Sinclair Hood described him as "an apostle of Common Sense".^[2]