studies programs in Germany are at Freie Universität Berlin and the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. France The emergence of comparative Indo-European linguistics and the translation of the Avesta happened in the late eighteenth century, by French scholar Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron. Iranian studies programs in France are at Sorbonne Nouvelle University Paris 3, and the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Sweden The earliest recorded Swedish visitors to Iran were in the 17th century, with Bengt Bengtsson Oxenstierna (1591–1643) and (c. 1621–1680). However a Swedish gold coin from 1700s was found in an Iranian bazaar, which may indicate earlier contact between the cultures. Early Swedish scholars of Iranian studies included Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931), Henrik Samuel Nyberg (1889–1974), Geo Widengren (1907–1996), Stig Wikander (1908–1984), Sven Hartman (1917–1988), and Bo Utas (b. 1938). United Kingdom A major European scholarly organization devoted to Iranian Studies is the Societas Iranologica Europaea, founded in 1981. The Iran Heritage Foundation was founded in 1995 and is based in London, they support Iranian studies at several universities and sponsors a wide range of public cultural events. Other Iran studies programs in the United Kingdom are at the University of Cambridge, the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS), Durham University, University of Oxford, University of St Andrews, University of London, and the Library for Iranian Studies. Other There are Iran studies programs in the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria; Jagiellonian University, and Warsaw University in Poland; the University of Salamanca in Spain; and the Scandinavian Society for Iranian Studies (SSIS) at various locations in Scandinavian. In North America United States Columbia University A. V. Williams Jackson was an early American scholar on Indo-European languages and worked as a Columbia University professor. Jackson was known for producing a grammar of the Avestan language. The monumental Encyclopedia Iranica project was started in 1985 and led by retired Columbia University professor, Ehsan Yarshater. Harvard University Richard N. Frye developed Iranian studies program in the 1950s at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. University of California, Los Angeles An Iranian studies program was created at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1963 in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (NELC) that was established by Wolf Leslau a few years before, in 1959. The doctoral program at UCLA is the largest program in North America, and was the home institution of Professor emeritus Hanns-Peter Schmidt who used to read Old Iranian and Old