Frederick William Thomas | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1867-03-21)21 March 1867 |
| Died | 6 May 1956(1956-05-06) (aged 89) |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Philology, Oriental languages |
| Institutions | University College, London,Balliol College, Oxford |
Frederick William ThomasCIE FBA (21 March 1867 – 6 May 1956), usually cited asF. W. Thomas, was an English Indologist and Tibetologist.
Thomas was born on 21 March 1867 inTamworth, Staffordshire. After schooling atKing Edward's School, Birmingham, he went up toTrinity College, Cambridge in 1885, graduating with a first class degree in bothclassics and Indian languages and being awarded aBrowne medal in both 1888 and 1889.[1] At Cambridge he studied Sanskrit under the influential OrientalistEdward Byles Cowell.
He was a librarian at the India Office Library (now subsumed into theBritish Library) between 1898 and 1927. Simultaneously he was lecturer incomparative philology atUniversity College, London from 1908 to 1935,Reader in Tibetan at London University from 1909 to 1937 and theBoden Professor of Sanskrit atOxford University between 1927 and 1937, in which capacity he became afellow ofBalliol College.[1] His students at Oxford includedHarold Walter Bailey.
Thomas became aFellow of the British Academy in 1927. He died on 6 May 1956.[2]
Thomas collaborated withJacques Bacot in publishing a collection of Old Tibetan historical texts. In addition he studied many Old Tibetan texts himself which were collected in his four-volumeTibetan literary texts and documents concerning Chinese Turkestan andAncient folk-literature from North-Eastern Tibet. He also published a monograph on theNam language, and wrote an unpublished work on theZhangzhung language.
His catalogues of the Tibetan manuscripts from Central Asia brought to the India Office Library byMarc Aurel Stein remained unpublished until 2007, when his catalogue of Tibetan manuscripts from Stein's third expedition was published on the website of theInternational Dunhuang Project.
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