Mostafa El-Abbadi
Mostafa Abdel-Hamid el-Abbadi (; October 10, 1928, Cairo – February 13, 2017, Alexandria) was a prominent historian of Greco-Roman Egypt and an Egyptian public intellectual. A professor in Classics at the University of Alexandria, he was credited with proposing the revival of the ancient library of Alexandria, a project embraced by UNESCO in 1986 and completed in 2003. He was later critical of some of aspects of the project as realized by the Egyptian government, telling the "New York Times" that the library was at risk of becoming "a cultural center" rather than fulfilling its "promise  as a world-class research center." A recipient of the Order of the Nile, El-Abbadi was a member of Egypt's Supreme Council of Culture (SCC), Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), and l'Institut d'Égypte. He served as president of the Archaeological Society of Alexandria and was an advisor to UNESCO. Educated in Egypt and the United Kingdom, El-Abbadi held a BA from the Alexandria University and a special BA and PhD from the University of Cambridge. He received an honorary doctorate from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He was married to the literary critic and scholar  Azza Kararah. His father, Abdel-Hamid El-Abbadi, was a historian and founding dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alexandria. He is the father of the computer scientist Amr El Abbadi. He died February 13, 2017 in Alexandria at the age of 88.