Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute notes with deep regrets the passing of Professor Ehsan Yarshater on September 1, 2018, in Fresno, California. He was 98.
Professor Yarshater was a brilliant educator, prolific author and generous philanthropist, who advanced the scholarship and understanding of Iranian Studies worldwide. He was associated with Columbia University since 1958 when he was first invited as Visiting Associate Professor of Indo-Iranian for two years. At Columbia, he held a long and distinguished career and was most recently Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies and Director of the Center for Iranian Studies (now the Ehsan Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies) which he founded in 1968.
Among Professor Yarshater’s many publications are volumes on Persian poetry, Persian literature, and Persian dialects. He also edited volume 3 of the Cambridge History of Iran covering the Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian periods. However, his greatest achievement and legacy is as Founding Editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica, an internationally renowned resource for the study of Iranian history and cultural heritage, which Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is proud to have been a supporter of since 2002.
Professor Yarshater will be sorely missed by countless friends, admirers, and scholars he touched with his numerous academic, service and philanthropic efforts. Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute offers its deepest condolences to his family.
