Denis Sinor was born on the 17th of April, 1916, in the city of Cluj Napoca, Transylvania, as the second son of catholic entrepreneur. He spent a part of his childhood at Budapest. He graduated there, from the Archiepiscopal Realgymnasium.
In his years of adolescence he mostly lived in Makó, South Hungary. In 1934 he became a student of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Budapest. Gyula Németh draw his attention there towards the Turkic people, while Lajos Ligeti taught him Mongolic languages, History of Inner Asia, and Altaic Philology.
In 1937 he earned the Mahler Prize, given to young and talented Orientalists, and he held the Horthy studentship two times (1936–1937 and 1937–1938). In 1937 he also earned the Jubilee Studentship of Budapest, which was given each year for one student studying in Budapest.
In the summer of 1937 and 1938 he held a scholarship to the Collegium Hungaricum to Wienna. Thanks to that he became acquainted with the rich results of Prussian Turfan research, and such eminent scholars like the Turkologist Annemarie von Gabain, or the Sinologist Erich Haenisch. Gyula Németh and Lajos Ligeti gave him the advice to write his doctoral thesis about the Turkic Buddhism of Central Asia. He published his thesis in Kőrösi Csoma Archívum in 1939, but never defended it. In 1939 a scholarship received from the Ministry of Education he went to France, where he learnt from Paul Pelliot. After the world war broke out, he remained in France, and taught Hungarian in the Ecole des langues Orientales. Besides he continued his studies in Orientalistics. From 1942 as politically unreliable he was arrested several times by the French and German police, but he always managed to talk himself free. He joined the French resistance, later the French Army. He dismantled in October of 1945. In 1948 he got the French citizenship.
After the war he was hired by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and gave lectures at the Ecole des langues Orientales and at the Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises. In 1948 he was offered a position at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of Cambridge University where he taught until 1962. Then as a guest lecturer he went to the Indiana University. Soon he quit at the Cambridge University, and became a university lecturer at the Indiana University. In 1965 he took over the leadership of the Asian Studies Program. In 1967 he transformed this program, and established the Asian Studies Research Institute. From 1979 this institute was called Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, while in 2007 it took the name Denis Sinor Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Between 1963 and 1981 he was the head of the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center. Thanks to his extraordinary organizatory skills, he managed to substantiate one of the world’s most siginificant research center on Inner Asian Studies.
The institute lead by him had an enormous impact on the research of Inner Asia. The books series founded at the Indiana University called Uralic and Altaic Series, Indiana University Oriental Series, up to now published more that 170 volumes. He also initiated the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC) which is one of the most prestigious conference of the field for more than 60 years.
The Prize for Altaic Studies up to 2014 awarded by the Indiana University and later by the Permanent International Altaistic Conference, was awarded to such eminent personalities of the Altaic field like Martti Räsänen, Sir Gerard Clauson, N. N. Poppe, Omeljan Pritsak, Jean Richard, Gerhard Doerfer, Igor de Rachewiltz, Klaus Sagaster, and also seveal Hungarian researchers, like Gyula Németh, Lajos Ligeti, Ödön Schütz, András Róna-Tas, György Kara.
The Royal Asiatic Society denominated a prize about him: Denis Sinor Medal for Inner Asian Studies.
In 1979 the Hungarian Academy of Sciences elected him as a honorary member.
His love for the Hungarian language and culture has accompanied him throughout his life. He considered one of the main results of his life when, in 1979, he succeeded in establishing a Hungarian Department at the University of Indiana with the support of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His close ties to Southern Hungary, which go back to his childhood, never ceased. In 1971 he received the Doctorate Honoris Causa of the University of Szeged.
Denis Sinor passed away on the 12th of January, 2011, in the age of 95 in Bloomington. Research on Central Asia lost a large-scale and world-renowned scholar with his death. In his will he bequested more than 3000 volumes of his own book collection on the University of Szeged. The books concern the history, culture, and languages of peoples of Asia.
