Donald Sewell Lopez, Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. Lopez was born in Washington, D.C. and is the son of Donald Lopez. He was educated at the University of Virginia, receiving a B.A. in religious studies in 1974, an M.A. in Buddhist Studies in 1977, and his doctorate in Buddhist studies in 1982. He is married to another prominent Religious Studies scholar, Tomoko Masuzawa. Lopez is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written and edited many books on various aspects of the religions of Asia. He specializes in late Indian Mahayana Buddhism and in Tibetan Buddhism and commands classical and colloquial Tibetan. In 2008 he gave a four talks on The Scientific Buddha: Past, Present, Future as part of a Dwight H. Terry Lectureship at Yale University. [More at Wikipedia]

June 1st, 1952 in Washington, D.C. (Age 72)