The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences had many members of German extraction like Wilhelm Radloff (1837-1918), Wilhelm Barthold (1869-1930) and S.F. Oldenburg (1863-1934) to quote just a few well-known names. Another scholar seems less known — in spite of the fact that he did ground-breaking research, published prolifically and promoted Russian scholarship abroad: Anton Schiefner (1817-1879) who served as a curator of the 2nd Section of the Academic Library (since 1848), adjunct for Tibetan (since 1852), and Academician extraordinary (since 1854). From 1856-1878, he was also director of the Ethnological Museum and, in 1860-1879, head of the 2nd section of the Academic Library. There is an entry in the Russian Biographical Dictionary but Schiefner’s name is only briefly mentioned in historical works — usually listing some of his publications but without giving much further information...
On November 22–24, 2023, the international conference for young scholars “Modern Buddhist education, historical, cultural and philosophical studies” will be held in Saint Petersburg. The program of the conference is now available.
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