Bruno Snell

Bruno Snell (18 June 1896 – 31 October 1986) 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 center in 1944.

After studying law and economics at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Oxford, Snell gained an 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, 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, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought (Die Entdeckung des Geistes, Hamburg, 1946, trans. T.G. Rosenmeyer, 1953) argues that the development of Greek literature from Homer to Aristophanes and Plato shows a gradual self-discovery of inner mental life. It argues that the Greek culture developed a unique and individual inner world of thought for humans, before which was not available. This is similar to later psychological theories of the development and evolution of human consciousness.