R.C. Zaehner was born in 1913 and educated at Tonbridge School and Christ Church, Oxford where he gained first class honours in Persian and Avestan. In 1936-37 he studied Pahlavi with Sir Harold Bailey at Cambridge where he began work on his monumental ZURVAN, A ZOROASTRIAN DILEMMA. During and immediately after the war he served at the British Embassy in Teheran. Appointed Lecturer in Persian at Oxford in 1950, he returned to Teheran in 1951 with the rank of Counsellor for a period of one year. On his return to Oxford he was elected Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics. R.C. Zaehner died in 1974.