Nora Elisabeth Mary Boyce was a British scholar of Iranian languages and an authority on Zoroastrianism.
15 Facts About Mary Boyce
1.
2.
Mary Boyce was Professor of Iranian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London.
3.
Mary Boyce was born in Darjeeling in British India where her parents were vacationing to escape the heat of the plains during the summer.
4.
Mary Boyce's father, William H Boyce, was a Judge at the Calcutta high-court, then an institution of the British imperial government.
5.
Mary Boyce's mother Nora was a granddaughter of the historian Samuel Rawson Gardiner.
6.
Mary Boyce was educated at Wimbledon High School and then Cheltenham Ladies' College.
7.
In 1944, Mary Boyce joined the faculty of the Royal Holloway College, University of London, where she taught Anglo-Saxon literature and archaeology until 1946.
8.
In 1948, Mary Boyce was appointed lecturer of Iranian Studies at SOAS, specialising in Manichaean, Zoroastrian Middle Persian and Parthian texts.
9.
Mary Boyce remained professor at SOAS until her retirement in 1982, continuing as Professor Emerita and a professorial research associate until her death in 2006.
10.
Mary Boyce's speciality remained the religions of speakers of Eastern Iranian languages, in particular Manichaeanism and Zoroastrianism.
11.
Mary Boyce was a recipient of the Royal Asiatic Society's Burton Medal, and of the Sykes Medal of the Royal Society of Asian Affairs.
12.
Mary Boyce was a member of the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, honorary member of the American Oriental Society, member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and was the first secretary and treasurer of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum.
13.
Mary Boyce served on the editorial board of numerous academic publications, including Asia Major, the Encyclopaedia Iranica, the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the Journal of the American Oriental Society.
14.
In 1975, Mary Boyce presented the results of her research at her Ratanbai Katrak lecture series at Oxford University.
15.
In 1979, Mary Boyce published Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, which not only summarised her previous publications, but anthologised the role of Zoroastrianism during subsequent eras as well.