Pierre Briant (born 30 September 1940 in Angers) is a French Iranologist, Professor of History and Civilisation of the Achaemenid World and the Empire of Alexander the Great at the Collège de France (1999 onwards), Doctor Honoris Causa at the University of Chicago, and founder of the website achemenet.com. He studied History at the University of Poitiers (1960–1965), and reached his doctorat d'État in 1972. His works deal mainly with the Achaemenid Empire, and related matters as Alexander the Great or the Hellenistic Era. In the words of Matthew Stolper, Briant "has shown a generation of scholars once isolated from each other that they are members of a common intellectual project of great consequence." Source: Wikipedia (en)