Franz Bopp, a German philologist, born at Mentz, Sept. 14, 1791, died in Berlin, Oct. 23, 1867. He began his studies at Aschaffenburg, went to Paris in 1812, and devoted several years to the study of the oriental languages and literature, receiving encouragement and assistance from Chezy, Sylvestre de Sacy, and August Wilhelm von Schlegel. He afterward went to London to pursue his investigations, and finally passed some time at Gottingen, receiving a small pension from the king of Bavaria. On his return to Prussia in 1821 he was appointed professor of oriental languages in the university of Berlin, where he spent the remainder of his life. His first publication was a work on the Sanskrit verb, which was followed by a grammar and glossary of that language. He also published some Sanskrit poems and a portion of the epic Mahabharata, giving the original text with translations. The great work of his life, and one that may be said to have laid the foundation of the science of comparative philology, is his Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, GriecMschen, Lateinischen, Litauischen, Altslavischen, Goth-ischen und Deutschen (5 vols., Berlin, 1833-,52; new ed., entirely recast and enlarged by the addition of the Armenian, 1857). A third edition was published after his death (1868-'7l). In this work he traced back the Indo-European languages to their origin, and pointed out their present relations to each other.

It has been translated into French and English. He wrote also on the relations of the Malayan and Polynesian languages to those of the Indo-European system, and on the Celtic, the Albanian, and the Caucasian languages. In honor of his memory the Bopp-Stiftung has been founded at Berlin, to promote the study of comparative philology. His library has been purchased by Cornell university, Ithaca, N. Y.