Paul Demiéville
Paul Demiéville | |||||||||
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| Born | 13 September 1894 | ||||||||
| Died | 23 March 1979 (aged 84) | ||||||||
| Nationality | Swiss | ||||||||
| Citizenship | French (naturalized in 1931) | ||||||||
| Spouse | Helène Demiéville | ||||||||
| Scientific career | |||||||||
| Fields | Buddhism, Chinese poetry | ||||||||
| Institutions | Collège de France | ||||||||
| Academic advisors | Édouard Chavannes, Sylvain Lévi | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Chinese | 戴密微 | ||||||||
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Paul Demiéville (13 September 1894 – 23 March 1979) was a Swiss-French sinologist and Orientalist known for his studies of the Dunhuang manuscripts and Buddhism and his translations of Chinese poetry, as well as for his 30-year tenure as co-editor of T'oung Pao.
Demiéville was one of the foremost sinologists of the first half of the 20th century, and was known for his wide-ranging contributions to Chinese and Buddhist scholarship. His influence on Chinese scholarship in France was particularly profound, as he was the only major French sinologist to survive World War II.
Demiéville was one of the first sinologists to learn Japanese to augment their study of China: prior to the early 20th century, most scholars of China learned Manchu as their second scholarly language, but Demiéville's study of Japanese instead has been followed by nearly every major sinologist since his day.