John Edward Atkinson (20 October 1938 – 11 April 2022) was a British and South African classicist.
He was Emeritus Professor of Classics, as well as a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts, at the University of Cape Town.
[4] Atkinson's academic interests lay in the field of Ancient History, but he can, in the British tradition, be considered first and foremost as a Classicist.
Joseph Roisman, in the Oxford Bibliographies entry on Alexander the Great, has labelled Atkinson as the 'leading commentator on Curtius'.
Jacek Rzepka, in a Bryn Mawr Classical Review article on Atkinson's work, described him as 'a scholar who has almost monopolized studies in Curtius Rufus for two decades'.