International Committee:   Mary Boyce (UK) Dr. Mary Boyce, Professor Emeriti of Iranian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, is an authority on Zoroastrianism, a frequent contributor to the Encyclopaedia Iranica and its Consulting editor for Iranian religions. Graduating from Cambridge University, she taught Iranian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (1947-1990) and served as Secretary and Treasurer of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum (1955-1970), was a member of the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society (1956-1960) and (1965-1968), and member of the editorial board of the journal Asia Major (1962-1976).  Boyce received the Burton Memorial Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1972 for her fieldwork with Zoroastrian communities in Iran. In 1975 she was elected an honorary member of the American Oriental Society, and in 1978, a foreign member of the Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.  In 1985 she was awarded the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal of the Royal Society of Asian Affairs.  Professor Boyce has published numerous works, including: The Manichaean hymn-cycles in Parthian (1954); The Letter of Tansar (tr.; 1968); A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (1977); A History of Zoroastrianism (3 vols. 1975-91, vol. 3 with Frantz Grenet); and Zoroastrianism, Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (1977, 1984).  She delivered the fourth Columbia Lecture Series on Iranian Studies, published as Zoroastrianism, Its Antiquity and Constant Vigour (1992).

Muhammad Dandamayev (Russia)  Academician Muhammad Abdul-Qadirovich Dandamayev of Oriental Institute of St. Petersburg is a foremost scholar of Achaemenid social history.  He specialized in Iranology and Assyriology at the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Russia.  He has served as Consulting Editor for Median and Achaemenid History at the Enyclopædia Iranica since 1982.  In 1959 he became a fellow of the Oriental Institute, and in 1967, head of the Department of Ancient Oriental Studies.  From 1994-95 he was a fellow of the Annenberg Research Institute in Philadelphia.  In addition, he has served as Deputy Editor of the Journals Vestnik Drevnej Istorii since 1986, and as Member of the Editorial Board of Iranica Antiquita since 1985.  Professor Dandamayev received the Ghirshman’s Prize of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Letters in Paris in 1976 and the State Prize of the USSR in 1987.  He has published numerous works including:  Iran pre pervich Akhemenidakh (1963, Iran Under the Achaemenids, tr. into German, English and Persian); Rabstvo v Vavilonii (1974); Kul’tura i economika drevnego Irana (1980, in collaboration with V. G. Lukonin); Vavilonskie Pistsy (1983); Politicheskaya istorija Akhemenidskoj Imperii (1985); and Iranians in  Achaemenid Babylonia (1992), the latter being based on his Columbia Lecture Series in 1988.

Rüdiger Schmitt (Germany) Coming soon!

Richard Nelson Frye (U.S.A.) Prof. Richard Nelson Frye, the Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Harvard University, is a noted scholar in Iranian languages and history.  Graduating from Harvard in 1946, he taught at Habibiya College in Kabul (1942-44), Harvard University (1948-90), Frankfurt University (1959-60), Hamburg University (1968-69), Pahlavi University of Shiraz (1970-76), and University of Tajikistan (1990-92).  Prof. Frye founded the Center for Middle Eastern Studies as Harvard.  He served as Director of the Asia Institute in Shiraz (1970-1975), was on the Board of Trustees of the Pahlavi University at Shiraz (1974-78), and Chairman, Committee on Inner Asian Studies, at Harvard (1983-89), and as Editor of the Bulletin of the Asia Institute (1970-1975 and 1987-99.  Professor Frye has published numerous works, including: Notes on the Early Coinage of Transoxiana (1949); The United States and Turkey and Iran, (with Lewis V. Thomas, 1951);  The Near East and the Great Powers (ed., 1951); History of the Nation of Archers (1954); The Heritage of Persia (1962); Bukhara (1965); The Golden Age of Persia (1975); The History of Ancient Iran (1983); and The Heritage of Central Asia (1996).  He was also the editor of Vol. IV of  The Cambridge History of Iran (1975).

Gherardo Gnoli (Italy) Prof. Gherardo Gnoli of the University of Rome is a foremost scholar specializing in Iranian Philology, Zoroastrianism, and History of Ancient Iran, and President of Istituto per l’Africa e l’Oriente since 1979.  After completing his studies at the University of Rome he became Lecturer of Iranistics at the Instituto Orientale of Naples in 1965.  Since 1968 he has been Professor of Iranian Philology at the Faculty of Humanities of the Instituto, and from 1970-1979 Rector of the Instituto Universitario Orientale of Naples.  He has served as member of numerous associations, institutions, and academies including the Comitato Nazionale per le scienze storiche, filologiche e filosofiche of the Italien Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche until 1988.  Professor Gnoli has published numerous works, including: Le iscrizioni giudeo-persiane del Gur (Afghanistan) (1964); Ricerche storiche sul Sistan antico (1967); Zoroaster’s Time and Homeland. A study on the Origins of Mazdeisms and Related Problems (1980); De Zoroastre à Mani. Quatre leçons au Collège de France (1985); The Idea of Iran. An Essay on its Origin (1989); and Shaqab al-Manassa. Inventario delle Iscrizioni Sudarabiche, Tomo 2 (1993).

Xavier de Planhol (France) Professor Xavier de Planhol, Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, is a universally acknowledged authority on political geography.  From 1958, when he began to publish monographs and articles on his first fieldwork in Azerbaijan, and later in the Alborz region, to his recent monumental and highly acclaimed, Les Nations du Prophète (1993) and Minorités en Islam (1997), he has maintained his deep interest in Persia and the Iranian civilization.  The variety and scope of his many contributions to the Encyclopædia Iranica, ranging from “Abadan” in one of the first fascicles to “Boundaries,” “Cholera,” “Darya?,” “Earthquakes,” “Famines,” and a series of forthcoming articles on “Geography” provide many examples of his fine empirical and theoretical grasp of the human sciences.  A bibliography of Professor Xavier de Planhol’s wide-ranging publications up to 1995, has been compiled and published by Professor Daniel Balland in Geographie Historique et Culturelle de l’Europe: Hommage au Professor Xavier de Planhol, ed. by Jean-Robert Pitte (1995).