Richard Gombrich is Founding Director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. From 1976 to 2004 he was the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford. He has been President of the Pali Text Society (1994–2002) and General Editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library.

Son of the eminent historian, Ernst Gombrich, he studied at St Paul’s School in London before entering Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1957, with a scholarship in classics (Greek and Latin). He received his B.A. in Oriental Studies in 1961, his DPhil in 1970, and an A.M. in Sanskrit from Harvard in 1963.

The author of numerous articles and books, including How Buddhism Began (1996) and What The Buddha Thought (2013), Richard is a leading authority on early Buddhism, and credited, among many other distinctions, with working out the dates of the Buddha’s life and death.