Georges Dumézil
1898–1986 (age 88)
Biography
Georges Dumézil, born in Nuits-Saint-Georges in 1898, carried the disciplined outlook of his early military service into a lifetime of comparative scholarship, treating myths with the same rigour he had learned in uniform. His studies of Indo-European traditions, and especially his proposal of the three functional spheres of divinity, reoriented the study of religion and myth and earned him a place among France’s most respected intellectuals.
He mentored generations of philologists and historians, and the careful synthesis of history, linguistics and anthropology that he championed continues to inform the way scholars explore the common roots of ancient societies.