Jean-François Champollion 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 in France in 1790, 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 Chinese in addition to his native 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. Subsequently created Professor of Egyptology at the Collège de France, he died in 1832.