Martin Jessop Price, M.A., Ph.D.

Martin Price was born on 27 March 1939, at the Choir School of St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London, his father being the headmaster. He was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he was an exhibitioner and gained a first in classics. In 1961 he held a studentship at the British School of Archaeology at Athens as recipient of one of the first exchange scholarships awarded by the Greek government, and this was followed by a research fellowship at Downing College, Cambridge. In 1966 Price joined the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, with responsibility for the Greek coins, and in the following year obtained his doctorate, under the supervision of Sir Edward Robinson, F.S.A., for research on the introduction of bronze coinage into the Greek world which included a detailed study of the coins of ancient Corinth based on previously untapped evidence from American excavations. Price spent almost thirty years at the British Museum: he was appointed Merit Deputy Keeper in 1978, Administrative Deputy Keeper in 1984 and Research Deputy Keeper in 1990, and the present physical layout of the rebuilt Department of Coins and Medals is largely his accomplishment. Then, in September 1994, as one of the leading international scholars in the study of ancient Greek numismatics, Price was appointed Director of the British School at Athens, but the glorious possibilities this appointment opened up, sadly, remained unfulfilled as he died less than a year later. Price published extensively and originally, starting with Archaic Greek Silver: the `Asyut' Hoard, jointly with Nancy Wagoner, in 1975 and Coins and Their Cities: Architecture on the Ancient Coins of Greece, Rome and Palestine, with Bluma Trell, in 1977. Appointed chairman of the British Academy's Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum project in 1958, he produced four volumes in the series himself, but his greatest achievement is undoubtedly the British Museum catalogue of The Coinage in the Name of Alexander the Great and Philip Arrhidaeus, 2 vols., 1991, the definitive study of a complex coinage, its many mints and mintmarks. Price devoted much time and energy to educational work and was at pains to reach a wider audience than the specialist numismatist. In 1980 he created, as editor and contributor, a general survey of numismatics entitled simply Coins and in 1988 he produced two popular books: Coinage in the Greek World, with Ian Carradice, F.S.A., and The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, edited with Peter Clayton, F.S.A. The latter was translated into German, French, Italian and Japanese and, to Price's great joy, just weeks before his death, he saw it in print in modern Greek, a language he spoke fluently. He was a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute from 1985 onwards, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton in 1986-7 and recipient of the Royal Numismatic Society's Gold Medal in 1992. He died on 29 April 1995.