Hermann Hunger

Hermann Hunger (born 1942) is an Austrian Assyriologist, professor emeritus of Assyriology at the University of Vienna,[1] from which he retired in 2007.

In 1963/64 he studied Assyriology and Arabic at the University of Heidelberg and from 1964 to 1966 at the University of Münster, where he received his doctorate in Assyriology and Semitic philology (Babylonian and Assyrian colophones) in 1966 under the tutelage of Wolfram von Soden.

He is considered one of the leading authorities on Babylonian astronomy history, where he worked early with Otto Neugebauer and Abraham Sachs, and later with David Pingree.

Hunger is a member of the American Philosophical Society[5] and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, of which he is chairman of the Commission for the History of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Medicine and the Mycenaean Commission.

Hunger translated a cuneiform tablet from the Babylonian astronomical diaries that describes the appearance of Halley's Comet in 163 BCE.

Observation of Halley's Comet, recorded in cuneiform on a clay tablet between 22 and 28 September 164 BCE, Babylon , Iraq. British Museum . [ 6 ]