Theodor Mommsen

Theodor Mommsen (1817 to 1903) was a German classical scholar, historian, jurist and politician, one of the greatest classicists of the nineteenth century and winner of the 1902 Nobel Prize in Literature for his Roman History. Born in Garding in the Duchy of Schleswig, he studied jurisprudence at Kiel from 1838 to 1843 and took the degree of Doctor of Roman Law, then turned from Roman law to ancient history and the study of Latin inscriptions. He became professor of law at Leipzig in 1848, resigned in 1851 after protesting the Saxon constitution, held a chair of Roman law at Zurich and from 1854 a professorship of law at Breslau, and from 1861 was professor of Roman history at Berlin. He published the fundamental collections of Roman law, the Corpus Iuris Civilis and the Codex Theodosianus, directed the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, sat in the Prussian and German parliaments, and wrote on Roman law and the law of obligations in ways that significantly influenced the German civil code.