Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840/1841 - 22 March 1899) was an Anglo-Hungarian orientalist.

He was born at Budapest, the son of a physician, and was educated at Malta Protestant College . At the age of fifteen he acted as an interpreter in Her Majesty's commissariat in the Crimean War, with the rank of colonel. He entered King's College, London, in 1858, and in 1861 was appointed professor of Arabic and Islamic law. He founded the Oriental department at the college in the same year.

He became principal of the Lahore Government College in 1864, and there originated the term Dardistan for a portion of the mountains on the north-west frontier, which was subsequently recognized to be a purely artificial distinction. Later he was founder and registrar of the Punjab University, and founded over eighty institutions in his lifetime.

He retired from the Indian Service in 1886.

He collected much valuable information on Graeco-Buddhist art and the origins of Indian art . He spoke, read and wrote twenty-five languages. He founded an oriental institute at Woking, and for some years edited the Asiatic Quarterly Review . He died at Bonn in 1899.

Reference

• J. FL Stocqueler, Life and Labors of Dr Leitner (1875)
• "Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of their Lives", The Strand Magazine, Volume VII, January-June 1894