F. B. J. Kuiper

Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuiper (July 7, 1907 – November 14, 2003) was a distinguished scholar in Indology, and "one of the last great Indologists of the past century ... His very innovative work covers virtually all the fields of Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan philology, linguistics, mythology and theater, as well as Indo-European, Dravidian, Munda and Pan-Indian linguistics [1]".

Kuiper was born in The Hague, in the Netherlands, studied Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Indo-European linguistics at Leiden University, and in 1934 completed his doctoral thesis on the nasal presents in Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages. After 5 years as a high school teacher of Latin and Greek at the lyceum of Batavia (Jakarta), Indonesia, in 1939 he was appointed Professor of Sanskrit at Leiden University.

Kuiper was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences between 1937 and 1939, when he resigned. He became a member again in 1948. He was a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. He died in Zeist and was buried in the Rijnhof cemetery at Leiden.

References

Obituary

• Obituary by Prof. Michael Witzel of Harvard University's Department of Sanskrit Studies in the Indo-Iranian Journal reprinted in the Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies (EJVS 11-1 2004) [2]