Oliver Gurney

Oliver Robert Gurney (28 January 1911 – 11 January 2001) was an English Assyriologist from the Gurney family and a leading scholar of the Hittites. Early life Gurney was born in London in 1911, the son of Robert Gurney, a zoologist, and a nephew of the archaeologist John Garstang. He was educated at Eton College and New College, Oxford, where he studied classics, graduating in 1933. His uncle John Garstang excited the young Gurney's interest in Hittite studies, then in its infancy, and after a course in Akkadian at Oxford University in 1934-35, he went to the University of Berlin to study Hittite under Hans Ehelolf. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Artillery, and served with the Sudan Defence Force.