Ted Riccardi

Ted Riccardi was professor emeritus in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University, New York.

He began teaching at Columbia in 1968 and served as chairman of his department and as director of Columbia's Southern Asian Institute in the School of International and Public Affairs.

Among his special interests were the history and cultures of India and Nepal, where he lived and travelled widely and about which he has written extensively. He received a number of research awards, including grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Ford Foundation and Fulbright fellowships. From 1980 to 1982 he served as counsellor for cultural affairs at the United States embassy in New Delhi.

In 1999, he took early retirement from Columbia to raise a new family and to write. Riccardi lived in New York City with his wife, Ellen Coon, and their family. The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes was Ted Riccardi's first work of fiction, a tribute to his favourite mystery writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.