Richard Hugh Robinson (21 June 1926 – 6 August 1970) was a scholar of

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

and the founder of the first

Buddhist studies Buddhist studies, also known as Buddhology, is the academic study of Buddhism. The term ''Buddhology'' was coined in the early 20th century by the Unitarian minister Joseph Estlin Carpenter to mean the "study of Buddhahood, the nature of the Budd ...

program in the United States that awarded a dedicated doctorate degree. In the 1950s he informally studied

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...

with

Edward Conze Edward Conze, born Eberhard Julius Dietrich Conze (1904–1979) was a scholar of Marxism and Buddhism, known primarily for his commentaries and translations of the Prajñāpāramitā literature. Biography Conze's parents, Dr. Ernst Conze (1872� ...

. He died in 1970 after an accident in his home. Nearly two years after his death, the journal '' Philosophy East and West'' published a memorial tribute to him, in an issue that also included three of Robinson's previously unpublished papers. Charles Prebish, in his 1975 edited introductory volume to Buddhism, wrote that in assembling the team of contributors to the volume Nearly fifty years after his death, in 2019, Robinson was profiled in '' Tricycle: The Buddhist Review'', and described as "the most important scholar of Buddhism you've never heard of".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Richard 1926 births 1970 deaths American Buddhists American Buddhist studies scholars