Hyman Hurwitz (1770–1844) was a learned Jew who became first professor of Hebrew at University College, London. He was born in Poznań, Poland in 1770, came to England about 1797[1] and conducted a private academy for Jews at Highgate, where he established a close friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and corresponded with him. Coleridge once described Hurwitz as "the first Hebrew and Rabbinical Scholar in the Kingdom".[1] In 1828, on Coleridge's recommendation,[1] he was elected professor of the Hebrew language and literature at University College, London. His inaugural lecture was published. He died on 18 July 1844.[2] Hurwitz was buried in the Brady Street Cemetery near Whitechapel in London's East End.[3]
Hurwitz also wrote many Hebrew hymns, odes, elegies, and dirges. A Hebrew dirge, "chaunted in the Great Synagogue, Aldgate, on the day of the Funeral of Princess Charlotte" was published in 1817, with an English translation in verse by Coleridge. The Knell, another Hebrew elegy by Hurwitz on George III of the United Kingdom, appeared in an English translation by W. Smith at Thurso in 1827. Hurwitz's library was sold at auction by Messrs Evans in at least two sales in London in 1846 (on 20 March [and two following days] and 25 March 1846); copies of the catalogues are held at Cambridge University Library (shelfmarks Munby.c.150(5-6)).
