Friedrich August Rosen (2 September 1805 in Hannover – 12 September 1837 in London) was a German Orientalist, brother of Georg Rosen and a close friend of

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include sy ...

. He studied in Leipzig, and from 1824 in Berlin under Franz Bopp. He was briefly professor of oriental literature at the University of London and became secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1831. His ''Rigvedae specimen'', excerpts from the Rigveda based on manuscripts brought back from India by Colebrooke, were enthusiastically received by European academia as the first authentic evidence of the archaic Vedic Sanskrit language. His most important work was an edition of the entire Rigveda, left incomplete at his premature death shortly after his 32nd birthday. His translation of the first book of the Rigveda appeared posthumously in 1838. The remaining books remained unedited for another five decades, until the ''editio princeps'' of Max Müller in 1890-92. Rosen also produced the first English translation of the '' Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala'' of al-Khwārizmī, in 1831.

Works

*"Radices linguae sanscritae" (Berlin 1827). *Rigvedae specimen (London, 1830) *the Algebra of Mohammed ben Musa (London 1831) *Rigveda-Sanhita, "liber primus, sanscrite et latine" (London 1838)

References

Meyers Konversationslexikon
*''Rosen, Friedrich'' in ''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Rosen, Friedrich August 1805 births 1837 deaths German orientalists Academics of the University of London German male non-fiction writers