Raimundo Panikkar

Raimon Panikkar Alemany
Raimon Panikkar in 2007
Born	Raimon Pannikar-Alemany (1918-11-02)November 2, 1918 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Died	August 26, 2010(2010-08-26) (aged 91) Tavertet, Catalonia, Spain
Occupation	Roman Catholic priest, theologian, scholar, chemist, philosopher

Raimon Panikkar-Alemany (November 2, 1918 – August 26, 2010; also known as Raimundo Panikkar and Raymond Panikkar) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a proponent of inter-religious dialogue. As a scholar, he specialized in comparative religion.

Raimon Pannikar was born as the son of a Spanish Roman Catholic mother and a Hindu Indian father in Barcelona. His mother was well-educated and from the Catalan bourgeoisie. His father belonged to an upper caste Malabar Nair family from South India. Panikkar's father was a freedom fighter during British colonial rule in India and escaped from Britain and married into a Catalan family. Panikkar's father studied in England and was the representative of a German chemical company in Barcelona.

Educated at a Jesuit school, Panikkar studied chemistry and philosophy at the universities of Barcelona, Bonn and Madrid, and Catholic Theology in Madrid and Rome. He earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Madrid in 1946 and a doctorate in chemistry in 1958. He earned a third doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome in 1961. He compared St. Thomas Aquinas's Philosophy with the eighth-century Hindu philosopher Ādi Śańkara's Interpretation of the Brahma Sutras.

In 1946 he was ordained a Catholic priest, and became a professor of philosophy at the University of Madrid.