17 Facts About Theodor Benfey

Theodor Benfey was born during the political upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars, when Lower Saxony was occupied by the French Army.

Theodor Benfey's father, Isaak Benfey, was a merchant and Talmud scholar, and the family had 8 children.

In 1810, when Theodor Benfey was one year old, the family relocated to Gottingen.

The French occupation ended when Theodor Benfey was 5, and Gottingen, which belonged to the Electorate of Hanover, became part of the Kingdom of Hanover, then ruled over by the British House of Hanover.

Theodor Benfey attended secondary school at the Gottingen gymnasium, and was tutored in Hebrew by his father Isaak.

Theodor Benfey showed exceptional talent for languages, and the Hebrew he studied with his father gave him a taste for philology.

At the age of 16, Theodor Benfey began studies at the University of Gottingen, where he studied Greek and Latin languages under Ludolf Dissen and Otfried Muller.

Theodor Benfey returned to Gottingen, where he defended his thesis titled De Liguris.

Theodor Benfey's defense was successful and he was granted his Ph.

Theodor Benfey immediately began working towards a university teaching license.

Theodor Benfey began his teaching career that year in the city of Frankfurt, where he worked and lived for two years.

Theodor Benfey then took up a position in Heidelberg, where he remained for two years as well.

Theodor Benfey worked at the university as a privat-docent, a lecturer who is unpaid and untenured.

Theodor Benfey searched unsuccessfully for paid work, even looking so far as France.

In 1839, Theodor Benfey published his first major work, his Griechisches Wurzellexikon.

From this time Theodor Benfey's attention was principally given to Sanskrit.

At length, in 1862, the growing appreciation of foreign scholars shamed it into making him a full professor, and in 1866 Theodor Benfey published the laborious work by which he is on the whole best known, his great Sanskrit-English Dictionary.