Jayne gardener biography

British historian (1934–2023)

Jane F. Gardner (10 March 1934 – 28 January 2023) was a British Roman historian, academic, and museum curator. She was emerita professor of Roman History at University of Reading, specialising in Roman law and Roman social history.

She was a professor at the university from 1993 until her retirement in 1999, having taught there since 1963.^[1] She was curator of the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology from 1976 to 1992.

Early life and education

Gardner was born in Glasgow on 10 March 1934 to a mixed Protestant-Catholic working-class family: her father, who had left school at 12, worked for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway while her mother (who had no secondary education) looked after their family.^[2] While at school, Gardner won first prize in Glasgow's Hutcheson Trust Bursary examination; she later won a Ferguson Fellowship to study Classics at the University of Glasgow, where she matriculated in 1951.