Robert Elsie is a writer, translator, interpreter, and specialist in Albanian studies. He is the author of over sixty books and countless articles on Albanian literature, history, and folk culture. The Austro-Hungarian aristocrat of Transylvanian origin, Baron Franz Nopcsa (1877-1933), was one of the most adventuresome travellers and scholars of south-eastern Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century. He was also a palaeontologist of renown and a noted geologist of the Balkan Peninsula.