Alexander W. MacDonald, emeritus research director at the CNRS, died on February 4, 2018. He was born in 1923. An officer in a Gurkhas unit in Burma during the war against the Japanese, he learned Tibetan and Nepali. Once demobilized and established as an anthropologist in France, he became one of the best specialists of contemporary Tibetan Buddhism as it was accessible in Nepal and Tibetan documents from Nepal. He was as comfortable working in the field as he was with books. He was a member of SEECHAC since its creation.