BEACON OF KNOWLEDGE
Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born in Tehran, Iran on April 7, 1933. He received his education in Iran and the United States and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

He returned to Iran in 1958 and was professor at Tehran University until 1979. In addition to teaching at Tehran University, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Vice Chancellor of the University and Chancellor of Aryamehr University. He also founded the Iranian Academy of Philosophy and served as its first president. Since 1984, Dr. Nasr has been University Professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and President of the Foundation for Traditional Studies.

Professor Nasr has written over twenty-five books and five hundred articles in Persian, English, Arabic, and French. His works have been translated into many languages including German, Spanish, Bosnian, Turkish, and Urdu.

Perhaps his most important contribution, however, is three generations of scholars he has trained in the course of his forty–year scholarly career in Iran and the West. This conference has been organized by his students in order to express their gratitude to Professor Nasr and to acknowledge the invaluable contribution made to the field of Islamic and Iranian studies and perennial philosophy by a scholar who has been rightly called "one of the major intellects of our time."