Heinrich Dumoulin

Dumoulin was born in the village of Wevelinghoven, Rhineland, Germany, the son of a notary public.

He studied philosophy in Holland and France, receiving his doctoral degree in 1929, and was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1933.

[3] Dumoulin was a scholar of Zen Buddhism and wrote several books on its history, first urged to do it by the American Buddhist Ruth Fuller Sasaki.

His Zen Buddhism: A history was published in 1988, translated from the original German by James Heisig and Paul Knitter.

[5] According to John Jorgensen Dumoulin was "the foremost exponent of the history of Zen Buddhism to the West".