Poerbatjaraka

Poerbatjaraka was a Javanese/Indonesian self-taught philologist and professor, specialising in Javanese literature. The eldest son of a Surakarta noble courtier in the Dutch East Indies, he showed interest in Javanese literature at an early age, reading from books in the court's collection. Despite attending only primary school, his knowledge of Dutch and Javanese literature allowed him to take a position at the colony's Archaeology Service, and then at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He was allowed to obtain a doctor's degree at Leiden. He then returned to the colony to work at a Batavia museum, cataloguing Javanese texts and writing scholarly works. After Indonesia's independence, he became a professor at the universities of Indonesia, Gajah Mada, and Udayana.