Professor Aziz Suryal Atiya was born on 5 July 1898, and died on 24 September 1988. He was a prominent Coptic historian, scholar, and an expert in Islamic and Crusades studies. Professor Atiya was the founder of the Institute of Coptic Studies in Cairo in the 1950s and was the founder of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. His library, The Aziz Atiya Library for Middle East Studies at University of Utah, is considered the fifth largest such collection in North America and is recognized internationally as a major research library in this field. While at the University of Utah, Professor Atiya rediscovered ten lost papyri fragments related to the Book of Abraham in the archives of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was married and the father of two children.