Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jan Gonda was a Dutch Indologist born in Gouda on the 14th of April 1905, and the first Utrecht professor of Sanskrit. He is recognized as one of the 20th century's leading scholars of Asian language, literature, and religion, particularly on texts related to Hinduism and Buddhism, and along with F. B. J. Kuiper is credited with elevating Dutch Indology internationally.
Gonda studied under Willem Caland at Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht. He succeeded Caland in the Chair of Sanskrit in 1929, and from 1932 held positions at both Utrecht and Leiden.
The Gonda Foundation was set up in 1992, the year after Jan Gonda's death, following a bequest he left to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. It offers publication subsidies and grants to projects in Indology, with the size of grants determined by the return on invested capital, and it also oversees the Gonda Lectures and the Gonda Indological Series.
No. Like many Orientalists of the 20th century, Gonda never visited Asia, despite devoting sixty years to publishing scholarly articles on Indian Sanskrit and Indonesian Javanese texts. His lack of field experience was compensated for by his deep knowledge of Indic literature and his empathy for Asian religious culture.
Gonda wrote scholarly work in Dutch, English, and German. His trilingual range allowed him to reach academic audiences across Europe and beyond.
Jan Gonda, Selected Studies is a six-volume collection published by E. J. Brill in Leiden between 1975 and 1991. The volumes contain most of his key articles and are considered the most useful starting point for studying his work.