Marcelle Lalou

Marcelle Lalou (1890–1967) was a 20th-century French Tibetologist. Her major contribution to Tibetology was the cataloging of the entire Pelliot collection of Old Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang at the Bibliothèque Nationale. In addition to her cataloging work, she wrote articles on various aspects of Old Tibet, and she published a Tibetan textbook. Some of her most notable students include Rolf A. Stein and J. W. de Jong.

Lalou was born August 23, 1890 at Meudon-Bellevue between Paris and Versailles. She was interested in art from an early age, and she painted and drew for pleasure her whole life. Her studies began in Art History, and many of her early publications are devoted to Art-historical themes.

Lalou volunteered as a nurse in the first world war. She made her start in Buddhist Studies following the war, studying Sanskrit with Sylvain Lévi and Tibetan with Jacques Bacot. She finished her doctorate in 1927 at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where she later taught from 1938 to 1963. She was the secretary and later manager for the Bibliographie Bouddhique, and she was the chief editor of Journal Asiatique from 1950 to 1966. For her work, Lalou was dubbed a Knight of the Légion d'honneur.