Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman (August 3, 1941 – June 16, 2026) was an American Buddhist author and academic who wrote, edited and translated books about Tibetan Buddhism. He was the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, before retiring in 2019. He held the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West. He was the co-founder and president of Tibet House US, New York, and its Menla Retreat & Dewa Spa in Phoenicia, New York. He translated the Vimalakirti Sutra from the Tibetan Kangyur into English. He was the father of actress Uma Thurman, and grandfather of Maya Hawke.

Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of Elizabeth Dean Farrar (1907–1973), a stage actress, and Beverly Reid Thurman Jr. (1909–1962), an Associated Press editor and U.N. translator (French and English). He was of English, German, Scottish, and Scots-Irish/Northern Irish descent.

Thurman attended Phillips Exeter Academy from 1954 to 1958 but was expelled weeks from graduation after leaving without permission to join Fidel Castro and his guerrilla army in Cuba. He was stopped in Florida and worked for a brief time in Mexico. In 1959 he married Marie-Christophe de Menil at age 18 before going to Harvard University, where he obtained his B.A. in 1962. He later returned to Harvard for graduate study in Sanskrit, receiving an M.A. in 1969 and a Ph.D. in 1972.

In 1961, Thurman lost his left eye in an accident "involving a racecar and a car jack", and the eye was replaced with a glass eye. After the accident, Thurman said, he decided to refocus his life, divorcing de Menil and traveling from 1961 to 1966 in Turkey, Iran, and India. In India he taught English to exiled tulkus (Tibetan lamas) in Dalhousie where the Young Lamas Home School was transferred.

After his father's death in 1962, Thurman came back to the United States and in New Jersey met Geshe Wangyal, a Kalmyk Buddhist monk from Mongolia who became his first guru. Thurman became a Buddhist and went back to India where, due to Wangyal's introduction, Thurman studied with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Thurman was ordained by the Dalai Lama in 1965, the first American Buddhist monk of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and the two became close friends. In 1967, Thurman returned to the United States.

Thurman then worked towards his Ph.D. in Sanskrit Indian Studies from Harvard, which he obtained in 1972. The same year, Thurman founded the American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia. He went on to become professor of religion at Amherst College from 1973 to 1988, then the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, retiring in 2020.

In 1986, at the request of the Dalai Lama, Thurman created Tibet House US along with his wife Nena, Richard Gere, and Philip Glass. Tibet House US is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help preserve Tibetan Culture in exile. In 2001, the Pathwork Center, a 320-acre (1.3 km²) retreat center on Panther Mountain in Phoenicia, New York, was donated to Tibet House US. Thurman and von Schlebrügge renamed the center Menla Retreat and Dewa Spa. Menla (the Tibetan name for the Medicine Buddha) was developed into a state-of-the-art healing arts center grounded in the Tibetan Medical tradition in conjunction with other holistic paradigms.

In November 2025, Thurman gave a talk organized by the Office of Tibet, London, and Enacting Peace in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, hosted by Chris Law, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet to celebrate the Dalai Lama's 90th birthday.