He was born in Garding[?], Schleswig, at the time part of the Danish monarchy, grew up in Oldesloe[?] and attended school in Altona[?].
Mommsen studied jurisprudence in Kiel from 1838 to 1843, then he went to France and Italy to study classical history. A professor of law at the University of Leipzig, he was involved in the 1848 revolution and had to resign in 1850.
He held posts at the University of Zürich[?] and the University of Breslau[?]. In 1858 he was professor of Ancient History at the University of Berlin, then he was named permanent secretary of the Prussian Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was later elected a member of the parliament of Prussia as a National Liberal (later as a Liberal).
Mommsen wrote 1887 works over 900 items and effectively gave a new order to the study of Roman history. He pioneered epigraphy[?], the study of inscriptions[?] on stone and wood. His most well-known work is the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, a collection of Roman inscriptions he wrote for the Berlin Academy[?] (1867-1959). Other works regarded Roman coinage and Roman constitutional and criminal law.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1902.
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