Eric Gardner Turner

Sir Eric Gardner Turner CBE (born February 26, 1911 in Broomhill, Sheffield , South Yorkshire , † April 20, 1983 in Inverness , Scotland ) was a British classical philologist and papyrologist .

Life

Turner attended King Edward VII School in Sheffield and then studied at Magdalen College , Oxford . From 1936 to 1948 he taught classics at the University of Aberdeen , but with an interruption from 1941 to 1945 due to his service in the Naval Intelligence Division in Bletchley Park , in which efforts were successfully made to decipher German communications. In 1948 he was first a reader , 1950 professor of papyrology at University College , London , retired in 1978. In 1975 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and was raised to the nobility in 1981 . In 1956 he was elected a member of the British Academy . Since 1976 he has been a corresponding member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences . In 1977 he was accepted into the American Philosophical Society .

Turner worked in particular on the edition of the Hibeh Papyri and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri and was involved in the deciphering and reconstruction of the so-called New Menander , the papyrus tradition of the comedy poet. A much-used introduction to papyrology comes from his pen as well as an illustrated representation of ancient Greek manuscripts.

Fonts

• Catalog of Greek and Latin papyri and ostraca in the possession of the University of Aberdeen. University Press, Aberdeen, 1939.
• Bernard Pyne Grenfell , Arthur Surridge Hunt , Eric Gardner Turner (eds.): The Hibeh papyri. Egypt Exploration Fund , London, 1906.
• Athenian books in the fifth and fourth centuries BC An inaugural lecture delivered at University College London, 22 May 1951. HK Lewis and Co., London, 1952.
• Greek papyri. An Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1968; first paperback edition 1980, ISBN 0-19-814841-0 . Italian edition: Rome 1984.
• New fragments of the Misoumenos of Menander. University of London, Institute of Classical Studies , London 1965 (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement 17).
• Ménandre. Sept exposés suivis de discussions, Vandoeuvres-Genève 1969. Entretiens préparés et présidés par Eric G. Turner. Hardt Foundation pour l'Etude de l'Antiquité Classique, Vandoeuvres, 1970 (Entretien sur l'Antiquité Classique, p. 16).
• Greek manuscripts of the ancient world. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971, ISBN 0-198-14284-6 . Second edition revised and enlarged. Edited by Peter J. Parsons . University of London, Institute of Classical Studies , 1987 (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 46), ISBN 0-900-58748-2 .
• The Papyrologist at Work. Durham, NC, Duke University, 1973.
• with TS Pattie: The written word on papyrus. An exhibition held in The British Museum, 30 July - 27 October 1974. Published for the British Library Board by British Museum Publications Limited. London, British Library, 1974, ISBN 0-7141-0488-4 .
• The Typology of the Early Codex. Philadelphia 1977.

literature

• Papyri, Greek and Egyptian. Edited by various hands in honor of Eric Gardner Turner on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Published for the British Academy by the Egypt Exploration Society, London, 1981.
• Herwig Maehler : In memory of Sir Eric Turner: Egypt under the last Ptolemies. In: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 30, 1983, pp. 1-16.
• David H. Fowler: Sir Eric Gardner Turner (obituary). In: Historia Mathematica 11, 1984, pp. 126-130.
• Peter J. Parsons : Eric Gardner Turner (1911-1983) . In: Mario Capasso (Ed.): Hermae. Scholars and Scholarship in Papyrology . Pisa 2007, pp. 317-325 (with picture)
• PJ Parsons: Eric Gardner Turner, 1911-1983 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 73 , 1987, pp. 685-704 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Members of the SAW: Sir Eric Gardner Turner. Saxon Academy of Sciences, accessed December 9, 2016 . 
2. ^ Member History: Eric Turner. American Philosophical Society, accessed January 30, 2019 . 

Web links

• photography