Anna Świderkówna (1925–2008)

Anna Świderkówna was born in Warsaw, Poland, the daughter of two chemists. During World War II, she served in the Home Army and as a nurse during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. For her role in the event, she was sent to a prisoner of war camp in Germany. Following her release at the end of the war, she studied classical philology at the University of Warsaw and received her doctorate in 1951. In 1957, she went to Paris on a scholarship to study at the Institut de Papyrologie at the Sorbonne. In 1958, she spent nine months in Egypt working on papyri from the Graeco-Roman Museum for the Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology. She became head of the Department of Papyrology at the University of Warsaw in 1961, a position she held for 30 years.
She wrote numerous books on ancient history for the general public, including Kiedy piaski egipskie przemówiły po grecku (When the Egyptian Sands Spoke in Greek, 1959), Hellenika: Wizerunek epoki od Aleksandra do Augusta (Hellenica: The Age from Alexander to Augustus, 1974) and her best-known work, Siedem Kleopatr (Seven Cleopatras, 1978). She served as the editor of Słownik pisarzy antycznych (The Dictionary of Ancient Writers). Świderkówna also contributed articles to various Polish magazines. Later in life, she wrote a number of books about the Bible.