John Edward Atkinson (20 October 1938 – 11 April 2022) was a British and South African classicist. He was Emeritus Professor of Classics, as well as a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts, at the University of Cape Town.
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Early life and education
Atkinson studied at Durham University. He took a BA (Hons) in Classical and General Literature in 1961, where he was classmates with R. M. Errington.
Academic career
Following his undergraduate studies he joined the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now University of Zimbabwe) as Assistant Lecturer. He moved to the University of South Africa a year later to take up a Lectureship in Ancient History. In 1965 he joined the University of Cape Town as Lecturer, also completing a PhD under the supervision of Ernst Badian in 1971. His first book, A commentary on Q. Curtius Rufus' Historiae Alexandri Magni Books 3 and 4, was published in 1980.
Atkinson's area of specialization for much of his career was the Latin historian, Quintus Curtius Rufus. Joseph Roisman, in the Oxford Bibliographies entry on Alexander the Great, labelled Atkinson as the 'leading commentator on Curtius'. Jacek Rzepka, in a Bryn Mawr Classical Review article on Atkinson's work, described him as 'a scholar who has almost monopolized studies in Curtius Rufus for two decades'.