Lajos Ligeti (October 28, 1902, Balassagyarmat – May 24, 1987, Budapest) was a Hungarian orientalist and philologist, who specialized in Mongolian and Turkic languages. After completing his secondary studies in his native town, he entered the prestigious Eötvös-Kollégium. He studied classical languages, but concentrated on Turkish and Hungarian philology at Budapest University under both Gyula Németh and Zoltán Gombocz, obtaining his doctorate in 1925. He spent three years on a scholarship in post-doctoral research in Paris where he studied Chinese under Henri Maspero, Tibetan under Jacques Bacot, and Mongolian and Inner Asian languages under Paul Pelliot, one of the three students, the others being Denis Sinor and Francis Cleaves who carried on Pelliot's work in Mongolian studies, and his