Raphael James Loewe

Raphael Loewe was born in India in 1919, and grew up in Oxford, where he studied at the Dragon School. While teaching in Cologne in 1938, he witnessed the rise of Nazism and served in the Armed Forces during the Second World War. He enlisted and was drafted into the Pioneer Corps, and later trained as an officer, posted eventually to the Royal Armoured Corps. He taught at Leeds University (1949-53), and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (from 1954). He then moved to University College, London, in 1961 and was appointed Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew in 1981, a position he held until his retirement in 1984. He served as president of the Jewish Historical Society of England, the Society for Old Testament Study, and the British Association for Jewish Studies. He died in 2011.