F. Max (Friedrich Max) Müller

Born in Dessau in 1823, Max Müller was a German-born scholar who spent most of his working life in Britain, especially at Oxford. He studied classical languages and Sanskrit, and became one of the best-known nineteenth-century interpreters of Indian literature and religion for European readers.

He is especially remembered for his work on the Rigveda and for overseeing the influential Sacred Books of the East series, which made important Asian religious texts more widely available in translation. His interests ranged across comparative philology, mythology, and the study of religion, and he became a major public intellectual through both scholarly writing and popular lectures.

Müller’s work helped shape the early fields now known as Indology and comparative religion. Some of his ideas have since been debated or revised, but his role in introducing generations of readers to Sanskrit literature and the religions of India remains central to his legacy.