Panikkar, Raimon (Raimundo) (1918–2010)

Raimon Panikkar was an influential scholar of comparative religion who was born in Barcelona, Spain, on November 3, 1918, the son of a Catalan Roman Catholic mother and a South Indian Hindu father. His cross-cultural and trans-religious background is matched by multiple intellectual achievements, including degrees in the humanities and natural sciences. His early studies were in chemistry at the University of Barcelona and the University of Bonn. After becoming a priest, he completed his PhD in chemistry at the University of Madrid in 1958, with a thesis on the concept of nature—El concepto del naturaleza. Earlier, in 1946, he earned a PhD in philosophy at Madrid and eventually a doctorate in theology from the Lateran University in Rome (1961).

In 1955, when he was 37, ...