Denis Sinor

{{Short description|American academic (1916–2011)}}

Denis Sinor (born Dénes Zsinór, April 17, 1916 in Kolozsvár (Austria-Hungary, now Cluj-Napoca, Romania) – January 12, 2011 in Bloomington, Indiana[http://www.allenfuneralhome.org/obituaries/denis-sinor.aspx Obituary for Denis Sinor]) was a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Central Asian Studies at the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University and a tenured lecturer at Cambridge University between 1948 and 1962, and was one of the world's leading scholars for the history of Central Asia. Under his directorship, the Central Asian Studies at Indiana University became one of the world's foremost centers for Central Asian history, languages and linguistics.

He grew up in Hungary and Switzerland and went to university in Budapest. During the Second World War, he was a member of the French resistance, served in the French army, and became a French citizen. Sinor wrote eight books and edited an additional thirteen. He authored more than 160 articles in several languages such as English, German, French, Hungarian, Russian and many other, more than 150 book reviews, and also contributed to Encyclopædia Britannica.{{cite web | url=http://www.indiana.edu/~ceus/faculty/sinor.shtml | title=Denis Sinor | publisher=Indiana University | work=Department of Central Eurasian Studies | date=Oct 26, 2010 | access-date=October 16, 2012 | archive-date=June 4, 2015 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150604061738/http://www.indiana.edu/~ceus/faculty/sinor.shtml | url-status=dead }} Sinor served as editor of the Journal of Asian History, between the publication's inception in 1967 and his death in 2011. {{Cite web|url=https://uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/philosophische-fakultaet/fachbereiche/asien-orient-wissenschaften/sinologie/forschung/publikationsprojekte/journal-of-asian-history/|title = Journal of Asian History | Universität Tübingen}}