Bluma Lee Popkin Trell was an American classicist, archaeologist, and numismatist. She earned a law degree from New York University at age 21 and had a private law practice for several years before becoming bored and returning to her studies. She was later a professor of Classics at New York University, and a recognized expert on the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Her reconstruction of the temple was on display at the British Museum and was used as a model in a painting by Salvador Dali. At NYU, the Bluma L. Trell Prize is awarded each year to a graduating senior who has made notable contributions in the field of Classics.
In 1973, Trell participated in a protest against the Metropolitan Museum's attempt to sell 6,000 ancient coins that it had lent the American Numismatic Society. A photograph of Trell playing the cello with the NYU Student Orchestra at the Society during the protest appeared in the New York Times and the New York Post which generated a lot of publicity and likely contributed to the success of the protest.
In 1977, Trell published Coins and Their Cities: Architecture on the Ancient Coins of Greece, Rome and Palestine, along with renowned British Museum authority Martin Price.
Bluma Lee Popkin was born in 1903 to Max Popkin, a portrait painter who helped establish the Grand Central Art Galleries, and Mary Samuels Popkin.
In 1924, she married screenwriter Max Trell, and they had one son named Max Trell Jr.
Trell earned her degrees from New York University: LL.B. in 1924, B.A. in 1935, and Ph.D. in 1942. Trell completed her dissertation, "Architectura Numismatica Part II, Temples in Asia Minor" in 1942, with Karl Lehmann-Hartleben as her advisor.