Charles Dowsett was the first person to hold a position in Armenian studies at a British university. His linguistic versatility and wide-ranging scholarship earned him an international reputation.

He was born on January 2, 1924, in London. He was educated at Barnbury Central School, and in April 1940 moved to Dame Alice Owen’s School. He went in 1942 to St. Catherine’s in Oxford for one year before military service (1943-1947), where he met Friedel Lapuner from Eastern Germany, whom he married in 1949. In 1947 he went to Peterhouse in Cambridge to read Modern and Medieval Languages and later turned to Comparative Philology.