Blochmann Henry Ferdinand

Henry Ferdinand (Heinrich) Blochmann (8 January 1838 – 13 July 1878), was a German orientalist and scholar of Persian language and literature who spent most of his career in India, where he worked first as a professor, and eventually as the principal at Calcutta Madrasa, now Aliah University in present Kolkata. He authored one of the first major English translations of Ain-i-Akbari, the 16th-century Persian language chronicle of Mughal emperor Akbar, published in 1873.

Born in Dresden he came to England in 1858 and enlisted in the British Army so that he could travel to India. After leaving the army he joined the Peninsular and Oriental Company as an interpreter. He was befriended by William Nassau Lees, the principal of the Calcutta Madrasa, and Blochmann, aged 22, became an assistant professor of Arabic and Persian there. In 1861 he graduated M.A. and LL.D. at the University of Calcutta, choosing Hebrew for the subject of his examination. In the following year he left the Madrasa to become pro-rector and professor of mathematics, at Doveton College; but returned to the Madrasa in 1865, and remained there for the rest of his life. He was principal when he died in 1878.