Antoine Brébion

Jean-François-Antoine Brébion (27 Jul. 1857, Lyon, France — 8 Jan. 1917, Paris) was a French journalist, teacher and independent researcher who spent twenty-eight years in Southeast Asia and contributed a monumental Dictionnaire de bio-bibliographie, posthumously published in 1935 by Antoine Cabaton.

A primary school teacherin Cochinchina from 1885 to 1912, he wrote many articles for French publications, wrote a Bibliographie des voyages de l’Indochine française du IXe au XIXe siècle and a Livre d’Or du Cambodge, de la Cochinchine el de l’Annam 1625 – 1910, Biographie el bibliographie (both Saigon, 1910), 

Louis Finot, then the head of EFEO in Hanoi and Phnom Penh, encouraged him to work on his ambitious Dictionary of bio-bibliography, on which he toiled after his return to France and up to his death. This work includes biographies of European explorers, missionaries and administrators, as well as detailed chronologies of Cambodian, Vietnamese, Cham, and Laotian dynasties.