Peter Alexis Boodberg was born "Pyotr Alekseyevich von Budberg" (, Pjotr Alekséjevič Búdberg) on 8 April 1903 in
Vladivostok, Russia, which was then still a part of the
Russian Empire. The
Budberg-Bönninghausen was a
Baltic German noble family, originally from the district of in
Werl, that had lived in
Estonia since the 13th century. After Russia annexed Estonia in 1721, they became a prominent diplomatic and military family in
Imperial Russia. Boodberg's father, Aleksei Pavlovich Budberg (1869–1945), was a
baron and the commanding general of the Russian forces in Vladivostok. His father's position ensured that Boodberg enjoyed a strong education in the
Latin and Greek Classics and in the major European languages. Budberg was a cadet at a military academy in
St. Petersburg until the outbreak of
World War I, when Budberg's parents sent him and his brother to
Harbin,
Manchuria, out of concern for their safety. Budberg attended the Oriental Institute (now
Far Eastern Federal University) in Vladivostok, where he studied
Chinese, which he had begun learning as a teenager in Harbin, and learned several other Asiatic languages. The Budberg family fled Russia in 1920 due to the anti-aristocracy violence of the
Bolshevik Revolution. The family emigrated to the United States, changing their surname to
Boodberg, and settled in
San Francisco. Boodberg enrolled as a student at the
University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a
B.A. in Oriental Languages in 1924. Boodberg continued studying at Berkeley as a graduate student, earning a
Ph.D. in Oriental Languages in 1930 with a dissertation entitled "The Art of War in Ancient China: A Study Based on the
Dialogues of Li, Duke of Wei." In 1932, Boodberg was hired to teach at Berkeley as an instructor in the Oriental Languages department. He was made an associate professor in 1937, Chairman of the department in 1940, and was promoted to full professor in 1948. Boodberg's scholarship won him
Guggenheim Fellowships in 1938, 1956, and 1963. In 1963, Boodberg also became President of the
American Oriental Society. He continued to teach until his death from a heart attack in 1972. Boodberg influenced several generations of sinologists, notably
Edward H. Schafer, who wrote a long obituary article in the
Journal of the American Oriental Society that was followed by a full bibliography by Alvin P. Cohen. Boodberg's only child,
Xenia Boodberg Lee (1927–2004), was a concert pianist based in the San Francisco Bay area. ==Selected works==