Jean Auguste Ulric Scheler (1819-1890), Belgian philologist, was born at Ebnat, Switzerland.

His father, a German, was chaplain to King Leopold I of Belgium, and Jean Scheler, after studying at Bonn and Munich, became King's librarian and professor at the Brussels Free University. His investigations in Romance philology earned him a wide reputation. He died at Ixelles, Belgium, in 1890.

The most important of his numerous philological works are:

• Mémoire sur la conjugaison française considérée sous le rapport étymologique (Brussels, 1847)
• Dictionnaire d'étymologie française d'aprés les résultats de la science moderne (Brussels, 1862)
• Etude sur la transformation française des mots latins (Ghent, 1869)

He also edited the fourth edition of Diez's Etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Sprachen (Bonn, 1878), and completed Grandgagnage's Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue wallonne (Louvain, 1880). He also published several critical editions of middle ages texts, including one of Les Fosies de Froissart (Brussels, 1870-1872), and a monograph Sur le séjour de l'apétre saint Pierre a Rome (Brussels, 1845), which was translated into German and English.