Ellis Hovell Minns was born in 1874. He came up to Pembroke after attending Charterhouse. He took the Classical Tripos but included Slavonic and Russian. After time in France and Russia he returned to Cambridge to lecture in Classics. In 1927, he was appointed Disney Professor of Archaeology, a post he held until 1938. He wrote widely with books including 'Scythians and Greeks' (1913) and 'The Art of the Northern Nomads' (1944). In the 1945 New Year Honours, Minns was appointed a Knight Bachelor, and thereby granted the title sir. He died in 1953.