F.H. van Naerssen

Frits Hermann ('Kees') van Naerssen (1904–1974) was a scholar of Javanese epigraphy and an early figure in Australian Asian Studies.^[1]

Born 1904 in Semarang and studied at Leiden University, earning a Ph.D. on old Javanese epigraphy in 1941 under  [id]. He worked for KITLV (then in the Hague) and was a curator of the Javanese collection at the Colonial Institute in Amsterdam 1939-46 before teaching at the Agricultural University of Wageningen from 1946 to 1956 University of Sydney from 1957 to 1970, an appointment that was the result of an Australian government grant for Indonesian studies.^[2] At Sydney, he was the first appointment in the Department of Indonesian and Malay studies, and at the time, "he alone in Australia has the equipment necessary to begin, among other things, old Javanese studies."^[3] His student Stuart Robson would recall "he came from an old Indies family and had grown up in Klaten (Central Java), so he had a strong affinity with Java and had the almost 'mystical' air of a silver-haired sage."^[4] He died in 1974 in the Netherlands.^[5][6]

He contributed to Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde and the . A memorial prize is given in his name for Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney.^[7][8]

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