Osmund Bopearachchi (born 1949) is a Sri Lankan historian and

numismatist A numismatist is a specialist, researcher, and/or well-informed collector of numismatics, numismatics/coins ("of coins"; from Late Latin , genitive of ). Numismatists can include collectors, specialist dealers, and scholar-researchers who use coi ...

who has specialized notably standardized the coinage of the

Indo-Greek The Indo-Greek Kingdom, also known as the Yavana Kingdom, was a Hellenistic period, Hellenistic-era Ancient Greece, Greek kingdom covering various parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and northwestern India. The term "Indo-Greek Kingdom" ...

and Greco-Bactrian kingdoms. He is currently Emeritus Director of the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

at the

École normale supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

and Adjunct Professor of Central and South Asian Art, Archaeology, and Numismatics,

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Background

Originally from

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

, Professor Bopearachchi received his Bachelor of Arts (General) Degree from the

University of Kelaniya The University of Kelaniya (UoK; , ) is a public university in Sri Lanka. Just outside the municipal limits of Colombo, in the city of Kelaniya, the university has two major institutions and seven faculties. History The University of Kelaniy ...

. In 1983 he joined a team of the CNRS at the École Normale Supérieure to further his studies. He received his Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology from the Institute of Art and Archaeology at the Sorbonne University Paris I in 1987. In 1998, he completed his

Habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV).

Academic career

In 1989, he became Research Specialist (''Chargé de Recherche'') at CNRS. In 1991, Osmund Bopearachchi published an extensive work on Indo-Greek and Greco-Bactrian coinage, ''Monnaies gréco-bactriennes et indo-grecques. Catalogue raisonné'' (400 pages), which became the reference in its field. His conclusions are based on extensive numismatic analysis (find places, overstrikes, monograms,

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...

, styles), classical writings, and

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

n writings and epigraphic evidence. The book received the '' Prix Mendel'' (Mendel prize) for Historical Research in 1992.

Books

* O. Bopearachchi, ''Monnaies gréco-bactriennes et indo-grecques, Catalogue raisonné'', Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1991, 459 p., 69 pl. * O. Bopearachchi, ''Catalogue of Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian and Indo-Parthian Coins of the Smithsonian Institution'', Washington D.C., 1993, 140 p., 41 pl. * O. Bopearachchi & A. ur Rahman, ''Pre-Kushana Coins in Pakistan'', Iftikhar Rasul IRM Associates (Pvt.) Ltd., Karachi, 1995. 237 p., 76 pl. * O. Bopearachchi & W. Pieper, ''Ancient Indian Coins'', Brépols, Turnhout, Belgique, 1998, Indicopleustoi, vol. 11, 289 p., 59 pl. * O. Bopearachchi, Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum. ''Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Coins''. The Collection of the American Numismatic Society, Part 9, New York, 1998, 94 p., 76 pl. * O. Bopearachchi & R.M. Wickremesinhhe, Ruhuna. ''An Ancient Civilisation Re-visited. Numismatic and Archaeological Evidence on Inland and Maritime Trade'', 1999, Colombo, 140 p., 3 maps, 36 pl. * O. Bopearachchi, ''An Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythian Coin Hoard from Bara (Pakistan)'', Seattle, 2003, 104 p. 33 pls. * O. Bopearachchi & Philippe Flandrin, ''Le Portrait d’Alexandre. Histoire d’une découverte pour l’humanité'', Édition du Rocher, Monaco, 2005, 267 p. 8 pls. * O. Bopearachchi, ''The Pleasure Gardens of Sigiriya. A New Approach'', Godage Book Emporium, Colombo, 2006. p. 80. (Sinhalese translation, Godage Emporium, Colombo, 2008).

References

* ''Monnaies Gréco-Bactriennes et Indo-Grecques, Catalogue Raisonné'' (in French), by Osmund Bopearachchi, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1991, * ''Pre-Kushana Coins in Pakistan'', Islamabad, 1995. 237 p. (with Aman ur Rahman). {{DEFAULTSORT:Bopearachchi, Osmund Living people 20th-century Sri Lankan historians Numismatists Sri Lankan collectors French National Centre for Scientific Research scientists 1949 births Historians of Sri Lanka 21st-century Sri Lankan historians Academic staff of the University of Paris Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research