{{Short description|English philologist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox scientist |name = Frederick William Thomas |image = <!-- (filename only)--> |image_size = ΔοΝΑ |caption = |birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1867|3|21}} |birth_place = Tamworth, Staffordshire |death_date = {{death date and age|1956|5|06|1867|3|21|df=y}} |death_place = Cambridge |residence = |citizenship = |ethnicity = |fields = Philology, Oriental languages |workplaces = University College, London, Balliol College, Oxford |alma_mater = Trinity College, Cambridge |doctoral_advisor = |academic_advisors = |doctoral_students = |notable_students = |known_for = |author_abbrev_bot = |author_abbrev_zoo = |influences = |influenced = |awards = |religion = |signature = <!--(filename only)--> |footnotes = }}
'''Frederick William Thomas''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|CIE|FBA}} (21 March 1867 – 6 May 1956), usually cited as '''F. W. Thomas''', was an English Indologist and Tibetologist.
==Life== Thomas was born on 21 March 1867 in Tamworth, Staffordshire. After schooling at King Edward's School, Birmingham, he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1885, graduating with a first class degree in both classics and Indian languages and being awarded a Browne medal in both 1888 and 1889.<ref name = "Venn">{{acad|id=THMS885FW|name=Thomas, Frederick William}}</ref> At Cambridge he studied Sanskrit under the influential Orientalist Edward Byles Cowell.
He was a librarian at the India Office Library (now subsumed into the British Library) between 1898 and 1927. Simultaneously he was lecturer in comparative philology at University College, London from 1908 to 1935, Reader in Tibetan at London University from 1909 to 1937 and the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University between 1927 and 1937, in which capacity he became a fellow of Balliol College.<ref name = "Venn"/> His students at Oxford included Harold Walter Bailey.
Thomas became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1927. He died on 6 May 1956.<ref>[http://www.britac.ac.uk/fellowship/directory/dec.cfm?member=3831 British Academy Fellowship record] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151001194434/http://www.britac.ac.uk/fellowship/directory/dec.cfm?member=3831 |date=2015-10-01 }} Accessed 30 September 2015</ref>
==Work== Thomas collaborated with Jacques Bacot in publishing a collection of Old Tibetan historical texts. In addition he studied many Old Tibetan texts himself which were collected in his four-volume ''Tibetan literary texts and documents concerning Chinese Turkestan'' and ''Ancient folk-literature from North-Eastern Tibet''. He also published a monograph on the Nam language, and wrote an unpublished work on the Zhangzhung language.
His catalogues of the Tibetan manuscripts from Central Asia brought to the India Office Library by Marc Aurel Stein remained unpublished until 2007, when his catalogue of Tibetan manuscripts from Stein's third expedition was published on the website of the International Dunhuang Project.
==Publications== *(1897) (with E.B. Cowell) ''The Harsa-carita of Bana.'' London: Royal Asiatic Society. *(1903) ''Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS.'' *(1929) (with Sten Konow) ''Two medieval documents from Tun-Huang.'' Oslo, A.W. Brøggers boktrykkeri. *(1933) ''Arthur Anthony Macdonell, 1854-1930.'' London: Milford. *(1935-1963) ''Tibetan literary texts and documents concerning Chinese Turkestan.'' [4 vols.] London: Royal Asiatic Society. *(1940-1946) (with Jacques Bacot and Gustave-Charles Toussaint) ''Documents de Touen-houang relatifs à l'histoire du Tibet.'' Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner. *(1948) ''Nam, an ancient language of the Sino-Tibetan borderland''. London, Oxford Univ. Press. *(1957) ''Ancient folk-literature from North-Eastern Tibet.'' Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. *(2007) ''Stein Tibetan: Third Expedition'' [http://idp.bl.uk/database/oo_cat.a4d?shortref=Thomas_2007 http://idp.bl.uk/database/oo_cat.a4d?shortref=Thomas_2007]
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== *{{cite ODNB|id=36472|title=Thomas, Frederick William|first=J. B.|last=Katz}} *[http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=5784844 Obituary], ''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland''
{{Boden Professors}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, F.W.}} Category:Tibetologists Category:English orientalists Category:1867 births Category:1956 deaths Category:Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford Category:Boden Professors of Sanskrit Category:People educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:Academics of University College London Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:People from Tamworth, Staffordshire Category:Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire