Lotte Labowsky

Carlotta Minna "Lotte" Labowsky (1905–1991) was a Jewish German classicist who left Germany in 1934 and became a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. She specialised in "the transmission of ancient Greek thought to the western world", working on the Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi series and on the library of Bessarion.

Early life and education Labowsky was born 23 April 1905 in Hamburg to a Jewish family. She studied classics and philosophy in Munich and then took a doctorate in Heidelberg in 1932. She volunteered in the Warburg Library in Hamburg, established by Aby Warburg whose daughters had been her school-friends. After anti-Jewish legislation was introduced in 1933, the Warburg Library moved to London and became the Warburg Institute, and she was invited to continue her research there; she was a senior research fellow of the Warburg Institute 1946–1951. and advised the translation of On Certainty (1969) and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956).

She died in Oxford on 28 July 1991, aged 86. Her obituary in The Times said that she "...embodied the humanist tradition of a bygone age in Europe". Corpus platonicum medii aevi. Auspiciis Academiae Britannicae adiuvantibus Instituto Warburgiano Londinensi unitisque academiis edidit Raymundus Klibansky. vol. 1. Meno. Interprete Henrico Aristippo. Edidit Victor Kordeuter. Recognovit et praefatione instruxit. Carlotta Labowsky. (1940–1953) Bessarion's library and the Biblioteca Marciana : six early inventories (1979, Warburg Institute)