Bruno Snell
Bruno Snell was a German classical philologist. From 1931 to 1959, he held a chair for classical philology at the University of Hamburg, where he established the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae research centre in 1944.
Biography
After studying law and economics at University of Edinburgh and University of Oxford, Snell gained interest in classical studies and finally changed his major to classical philology. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in 1922.Snell served as the inaugural president of the Mommsen Society from 1950 to 1954. In 1953, the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg, an institution promoting research and postgraduate education in the field of European integration, was founded on Snell's initiative. Since 1989, the Mommsen Society has awarded the Bruno Snell Prize to young classical scholars.
His book, argues that the development of Greek literature from Homer to Aristophanes and Plato shows a gradual self-discovery of an inner mental life. It argues that the Greek culture developed a unique and individual inner world of thought for humans, which did not exist before. This is similar to later psychological theories of the development and evolution of human consciousness.