DUMÈZIL, GEORGES. Georges Dumézil (1898–1986) was a French scholar who revolutionized the study of comparative mythology, especially comparative Indo-European mythology. In the early decades of the twentieth century, largely as a result of the eclipse of Max Müller's "solar mythology" (Dorson, 1955), the science of comparative mythology—especially comparative Indo-European mythology—reached a low ebb. However, the basic questions to which Müller and his adherents had addressed themselves—the curious thematic, if not in all cases etymological, parallels among a great many ancient Indo-European gods and heroes—remained unresolved. In the early 1920s a young French scholar named Georges Dumézil set out to find a viable framework in terms of which these questions might once again be approached.

Born in Paris on March 4, 1898, Dumézil attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and later the prestigious École Normale Sup...