Paul Pelliot
Paul Eugène Pelliot (28 May 1878 – 26 October 1945) was a French sinologist and Orientalist best known for his explorations of Central Asia and the Silk Road regions, and for his acquisition of many important Tibetan Empire-era manuscripts and Chinese texts at the Sachu printing center storage caves (Dunhuang), known as the Dunhuang manuscripts. A hyperpolyglot, he spoke 13 Oriental languages, including among others Mandarin and Cantonese, Turkish, Russian, Mongolian, Hebrew, Uzbek, Pashto, and Tagalog, as well as Sanskrit, and even rarer languages such as Uyghur, and the extinct languages Sogdian and Tocharian.