Sunday, July 21, 2013

1936 Olympic Games

This afternoon I saw an article about archeologist Halet Çambel having been a fencer on the 1936 Turkish Olympic team, becoming the first-ever Muslim woman to compete in the Olympic games. This reminded me that Michael B. Rowton, Oriental Institute Assyriologist, was said to have been a member of the 1936 British Olympic skiing team at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, Germany. I can find no evidence of this aside from the obituary in the Chicago Sun-TimesJanuary 11, 1986.

To the best of my knowledge there is no published biographical sketch of Michael Rowton, which is too bad, he was an interesting man.