Gábor Betegh

• 1. Introduction

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  Gábor Betegh holds one of the oldest named chairs in philosophy at any English university. He is the eighth Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge, a position stretching back through a distinguished line of scholars who spent their careers making sense of the Greeks and Romans. When Betegh succeeded David Sedley in October 2014, he brought with him a particular obsession: a badly charred roll of papyrus found in a Macedonian grave. That papyrus had haunted scholars for decades. Betegh had been working out what it meant for most of his adult life. How does a Hungarian scholar, trained in Budapest and Paris as well as Cambridge, come to occupy one of philosophy's most storied seats? And what does a smouldering ancient text have to do with the answers?

• 2. The Derveni Papyrus

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  Betegh's doctoral dissertation focused on the Derveni Papyrus, one of the most debated texts to survive from antiquity. He turned that dissertation into a book, published by Cambridge University Press in 2004, titled The Derveni Papyrus. It is a critical edition and study of the papyrus, meaning Betegh produced both the definitive reconstructed text and a sustained scholarly interpretation of what the document actually says. The book won a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award, a recognition given to works judged exceptional for undergraduate libraries across North America. For a specialist work on a fragmentary ancient text, that reach is notable. The papyrus itself sits at the intersection of early Greek religion, cosmology, and philosophy, and Betegh's treatment of it established him as a leading voice on pre-Socratic thought.

• 3. Formation Across Three Cities

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  Betegh was born on the 20th of June 1968 and trained at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest before moving to Cambridge, where he studied under David Sedley, the very professor he would eventually succeed. He then went to the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, working under Jacques Brunschwig, one of the foremost historians of ancient philosophy in France. That combination of Central European rigour, Cambridge analytic tradition, and French intellectual history gave Betegh an unusually wide formation. Few ancient philosophy scholars can claim training under two figures of that calibre at institutions in three different countries. Brunschwig's influence in particular connected Betegh to a tradition of painstaking Greek textual scholarship that ran alongside, and sometimes challenged, the dominant Cambridge approach.

• 4. Between Budapest and Cambridge

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  Before taking the Laurence Professorship, Betegh spent thirteen years at the Central European University in Budapest, from 2001 to 2014. He retains a visiting professorship there, keeping a foot in the institution that shaped his academic career during those years. During the same period he held fellowships at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies, at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and at the TOPOI project based at Humboldt University. He also held visiting professorships at Cornell University, the University of Florence, and the University of Rome La Sapienza. That circuit of prestigious fellowships and visiting posts made his reputation international well before Cambridge came calling. At Christ's College, Cambridge, he now serves as Director of Studies in Philosophy and as Graduate Tutor, roles that put him at the centre of how the next generation of philosophers is trained at one of the university's oldest colleges.