Serge Elisséeff, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Serge Elisséeff

French academic

Date of Birth: 13-Jan-1889

Place of Birth: Saint Petersburg

Date of Death: 13-Apr-1975

Profession: translator, university teacher, linguist

Nationality: France

Zodiac Sign: Capricorn

Serge Elisséeff (born Sergei Grigorievich Eliseyev; 13 January 1889 – 13 April 1975) was a Russian-French scholar, Japanologist, and professor at Harvard University.
He was one of the first Westerners to study Japanese at a university in Japan.
He began studying Japanese at the University of Berlin, then transferred to Tokyo Imperial University (modern University of Tokyo) in 1912, becoming the first Westerner to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University in Japanese as well as its first Western graduate student.Elisséeff served in 1916 as Privat-Dozent at Petrograd Imperial University (modern Saint Petersburg State University), and in 1917 as Professor in the Institute for the History of Foreign Affairs in Petrograd.
Many years later, his émigrée memories of chaos and fear during the Russian Revolution were stirred by the effects of pernicious McCarthyism at Harvard.
While at Harvard he founded the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies.
Fluent in eight languages, including Chinese and Japanese, Elisséeff was one of the foremost Japanologists of his time, both in the West and in Japan.
The American Japanologist Edwin O.
Reischauer, who was one of Elisséeff's students, wrote that "perhaps no one better deserves the title of Father of Far Eastern Studies in the United States." He had close personal ties to many of the greatest Japanese literary names of the early 20th century and wrote occasional articles for the Asahi Shimbun.