Robert Manuel Cook - Biography

Biography

Robert Cook was born in Sheffield on 4 July 1909, the son of a clergyman, and educated at Marlborough College and Clare College, Cambridge where he graduated with a double first in Classics. After pre-war lecturing positions at the University of Manchester and wartime service in the Civil Service, in 1946 Cook took up the position of Laurence reader in classical archaeology at Cambridge University, which he held until his elevation in 1962 to the Laurence chair where he remained until his formal retirement in 1976. Cook published extensively during his career; his Greek Painted Pottery (1962) remains a standard textbook for students of the subject.

In retirement Cook acted as chairman of the British School at Athens (1983-1987). He died in Cambridge on 10 August 2000 aged 91.

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