Background
He was born in Java of Dutch parents on the 6th of April 1833. When he was six his family repatriated to the Netherlands.
He was born in Java of Dutch parents on the 6th of April 1833. When he was six his family repatriated to the Netherlands.
When he entered grammar school, he added the extra-curricular subjects of English and Italian to his studies. He studied at Utrecht University, Leiden University and Berlin University, where he was a pupil of the Sanskrit scholar, Albrecht Weber.
After some years spent as professor of Greek at Maestricht, he became professor of Sanskrit at Benares in 1863, and in 1865 at Leiden. His studies included the Malay languages as well as Sanskrit. He remained there until his retirement in 1903, when he moved to the city of Utrecht. Professor Kern continued work after his retirement, but when in 1916 his wife died, he was heart-broken and out-lived her by less than a year.
His chief work is Geschiedenis van het Buddhisme in Indie (Haarlem, 2 vols. , 1881 - 1883); in English he wrote a translation (Oxford, 1884) of the Saddharma Pundarika and a Manual of Indian Buddhism (Strassburg, 1896) for Biihler Kielhorn's Grundriss der indo- arischen Philologie.
In 1866 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He displayed an extraordinary ability to study, and to master, a wide variety of languages.