Maxime Rodinson (1915–2004)

Maxime Rodinson was born in Paris to Russian-Polish Jewish immigrants who had arrived in France at the end of the 19th century fleeing from pogroms. His father was a clothing trader who set up a business in the Marais district and tried to organize and unionize other working-class immigrants. Both his parents were members of the Communist Party. Rodinson left school at age 14 to help support the family working as an errand boy, but continued to study with borrowed books and friendly teachers. He taught himself Esperanto, English, Greek, and Latin.

In 1932, at age 17, because of a rule that allowed persons without the baccalauréat to take the competitive entrance examination, Rodinson won admittance to the prestigious Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations) and studied Arabic, Hebrew, and Turkish, among others. At the start of World War II in 1940, he was mobilized into the French army and sent to Syria. He worked with the Archaeological Mission of Free France in Beirut, Lebanon, then taught at the École des lettres there.

His parents died in 1943 while being deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. In 1948, back in Paris, Rodinson became head of the "Islam" section of the Bibliothèque nationale (National Library). In 1950, he earned a doctorate in history at the Ecole pratique des hautes études (EPHE) and was appointed director of studies there in 1955. He became professor of classical Ethiopian and South Arabian four years later, and remained in that position until his retirement in 1986. Prof. Rodinson was a member of the French Communist Party from 1937 until he was expelled in 1958 for his independent thinking. He was the author of monumental works devoted to the Islamic world and the Middle East, but also enjoyed researching cookbooks and the influences of Arab cuisine on European medieval cuisine. His publications included hundreds of scholarly articles, some 20 books, and several collections of essays. His autobiography, Souvenirs d'un marginal, appeared posthumously in 2005.