• Murray, George Gilbert Aimé

Gilbert Murray was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1866. Having moved to England at the age of seven, he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and then St John’s College, Oxford, where he excelled in classics and won several prizes. At the age of twenty-three he became university professor of Greek at Glasgow, before moving to Oxford in 1905 where he became regius professor of Greek three years later. Murray published numerous books and translations, and established himself as an authority on the Ancient Greek world. He retired from the regius chair in 1936.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Murray became increasingly involved in contemporary political affairs, working for the British League of Nations Union beginning in 1918. After an invitation by Jan Smuts, he participated at the League of Nations (LN) 1921 Assembly. During the 1930s, he collaborated with William Beveridge in setting up the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning. Although somewhat disenchanted with the LN after the Abyssinian crisis, his commitment for international cooperation remained (Stray 2004). After the Second World War, he served three terms as President of the United Nations Association.

Murray was a member of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) from 1922 until 1939, the only individual apart from Gonzague de Reynold to serve for the entire period of its existence. In 1928, Murray became President of the ICIC, succeeding Henri Bergson and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. After the war, he was involved in the preparatory discussions of the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME). Murray died in 1957.

• UNESCO Archives, Archival Group 1, IIIC A.I.35
• Christopher Stray 2004 ‘Murray, (George) Gilbert Aimé (1866–1957)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35159, accessed 8 July 2015].