ETIENNE

See also:

• ETIENNE FOURMONT (1683–1745)

FOURMONT (1683–1745)  , French orientalist, was born at Herbelai, near Saint Denis, on the 23rd of June 1683 . He studied at the College Mazarin, Paris, and afterwards in the College Montaigu, where his attention was attracted to Oriental languages . Shortly after leaving the college he published a Traduction du commentaire du Rabbin Abraham Aben Esra sur l'ecclesiaste . In 1711 Louis XIV. appointed Fourmont to assist a young Chinese, Hoan-ji, in compiling a Chinese grammar . Hoan-ji died in 1716, and it was not until 1737 that Fourmont published Meditations Sinicae and in 1742 Grammatica Sinica . He also wrote Reflexions critiques sur les histoires des anciens peuples (1735), and several dissertations printed in the Memoires of the Academy of Inscriptions . He became professor of Arabic in the College de France in 1715 . In 1713 he was elected a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, in 1738 a member of the Royal Society of London, and in 1742 a member of that of Berlin . He died at Paris on the 19th of December 1745 . His brother, Michel Fourmont (1690–1746), was also a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and professor of the Syriac language in the Royal College, and was sent by the government to copy inscriptions in Greece . An account of Etienne Fourmont's life and a catalogue of his works will be found in the second edition (1747) of his Reflexions critiques .