Jean_François Champollion (December 23, 1790 _ March 4, 1832) is remembered particularly for one achievement: the translation of the Rosetta stone, which became the basis of the study of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
He was born at Figeac, France and showed an extraordinary linguistic talent, even as a child. By the age of twenty he had mastered several languages, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Amharic, Sanskrit, Avestan, Pahlavi, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean, Persian and French. In 1809, he became Professor of History at Grenoble. His interest in oriental languages, especially Coptic, led to his being entrusted with the task of deciphering the writing on the recently_discovered Rosetta Stone, and he spent the years 1822-1824 on this task, greatly expanding the works of Thomas Young on the area, which proved the key to the study of Egyptology. He also identified the importance of the Turin King List.
Subsequently created Professor of Egyptology at the Collège de France.
Champollion was a planned cometary rendezvous and landing spacecraft.
As originally envisaged, the joint NASA/CNES Champollion was to be one of two surface science packages for the Rosetta mission to comet Wirtanen, alongside the German-led RoLand.
In this version, Champollion would be a stand-alone project consisting of an orbiter and a lander, with the focus shifted somewhat to engineering validation of new technologies rather than pure science.
Jean-François Champollion (23 December 1790–4 March 1832) is remembered particularly for one achievement: his translation of the Rosetta stone, which became the basis of the study of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
However, exhausted by his labours during and after his scientific expedition to Egypt between 1828 and 1830, he died of an apoplectic attack in Paris in 1832 at the age of 41 and is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
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