Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman (born August 4, 1941) is an influential and prolific American Buddhist writer and academic who has authored, edited or translated several books on Tibetan Buddhism. He is the Je Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, holding the first endowed chair in this field of study in the United States. He also is the co-founder and president of the Tibet House New York and is active against the People's Republic of China's control of Tibet.
Thurman was born in New York City, the son of Elizabeth Dean (née Farrar), a stage actress, and Beverly Reid Thurman, Jr., an Associated Press editor and U.N. translator. He attended Philips Exeter Academy from 1954 to 1958, followed by Harvard University, obtaining an A.B. in 1962.
He married Christophe de Menil, an heiress to the Schlumberger Limited oil-equipment fortune, in 1959; they had one daughter, Taya; their grandson is the artist Dash Snow. In 1961 Thurman lost his left eye in an accident while he was using a jack to lift an automobile, and the eye was replaced with an ocular prosthetic. Following the accident he decided to re-focus his life, divorced his wife and traveled from 1961 to 1966 in Turkey, Iran and India. He converted to Buddhism and became an ordained Buddhist priest in 1964, the first American monk of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He studied with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, who became a close friend. In 1967, back in the United States, Thurman resigned his vow of celibacy and married his second wife, German-Swedish model, Nena von Schlebrügge, who had previously been briefly married to Timothy Leary. Thurman and Schlebrügge, now a psychotherapist, had four children, the oldest being actress Uma Thurman.
Thurman obtained an A.M. in 1969 and a Ph.D. in Sanskrit Indian Studies in 1972 from Harvard. He was professor of religion at Amherst College from 1973 to 1988 when he accepted a position at Columbia University. Time chose him as one of the 25 most influential Americans of 1997.
Dr. Thurman is highly-regarded for his lucid, dynamic translations and explanations of Buddhist religious and philosophical material, particularly that pertaining to the Gelukpa (dge-lugs-pa) school of Tibetan Buddhism and its founder, Je Tsongkhapa.
