Otto Skutsch

Otto Skutsch (6 December 1906 – 8 December 1990) was a German-born British classicist and academic, specialising in classical philosophy. He was Professor of Latin at University College London from 1951 to 1972.

Skutsch was born on 6 December 1906 in Breslau, then in the German Empire. He was the third child of Franz Skutsch, a German classical philologist. He was six years old when his father died. He was educated at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Breslau. He then studied at the University of Breslau, the University of Kiel, the University of Berlin, and the University of Göttingen. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree at Göttingen in 1934. Because his father was Jewish, Skutsch saw the rise of the Nazi Party as a threat to himself, and so he left Germany for the United Kingdom sometime in 1934 or 1935.

Having arrived in the United Kingdom, Skutsch secured a post at the University of St Andrews as a research assistant working on the compilation a dictionary of Latin. This was achieved through W. M. Lindsay, a professor at St Andrews who had had great respect Skutsch's father. From 1938 to 1939, he was a senior assistant at Queen's University Belfast. With the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, he was interred for the extent of the war as an enemy alien. He was granted British citizenship in 1946.