| Administrative History | Ananda Kentish Coomarswamy was born in Colombo, Ceylon [now Sri Lanka] on 22 August 1877. His Tamil father, Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy (1834-1879), was a barrister, politician and religous scholar who had received his legal training in England. Aged two, Ananda was taken to England by his English mother Elizabeth [née Beeby] but his father, who was due to follow shortly after, died suddenly on the day he was due to depart.
Ananda was educated at Wycliffe College, Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, then later University College of London where he graduated with a first class honours degree in mineralogy and botany in 1900. He was headhunted by Wyndham Dunstan, the head of the Imperial Institute, Kensington to become the director of the mineralogical survey of Ceylon, a post Coomaraswamy held until 1906. He notably discovered the mineral thorianite in 1906 for which he was awarded an honorary DSc by the University of London.
During his time in the country, he had gradually become interested in the arts of Ceylon and India, resulting in his resignation from the survey to devote himself to private study. By 1917 he abanded geology entirely when he was invited to become a research fellow in Indian, Persian and Muhammadan art for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts. Coomaraswamy is better known today for his work as an Indologist, art historian and his championing of Ceylonese culture. He died in Needham, Massachusetts, on 9 September 1947. |