List of Russian Scientists - Linguists and Ethnographers

Linguists and Ethnographers

• Vasily Abaev, a prominent researcher of Iranian languages
• Alexander Afanasyev, leading Russian folklorist, recorded and published over 600 Russian fairy tales, by far the largest folktale collection by any one man in the world
• Ivan Baudouin de Courtenay, co-inventor of the concept of phoneme and the systematic treatment of alternations, pioneer of synchronic analysis and mathematical linguistics
• Vladimir Bogoraz, researcher of Chukchi people, founder of the Institute of the Peoples of the North
• Otto von Böhtlingk, prominent Indologist and Sanskrit grammarian
• Fyodor Buslaev, philologist and folklorist, representative of the Mythological school of comparative literature
• Vladimir Dahl, the greatest Russian language lexicographer of the 19th century, folklorist and turkologist, author of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Live Great Russian language
• Johann Gottlieb Georgi, explorer, published the first full-scale work on ethnography of indigenous peoples of Russia
• Dmitry Gerasimov, medieval translator, diplomat and philologist, correspondent of European Renaissance scholars
• Vladislav Illich-Svitych, founder of Nostratic linguistics
• Vyacheslav Ivanov, founder of glottalic theory of Indo-European consonantism
• Roman Jakobson, literary theorist and preeminent linguist of the 20th century, a founder of phonology, made numerous contributions to Slavic linguistics, author of Jackobson's Communication Model
• Wilhelm Junker, explorer and ethnographer of Equatorial Africa, studied Azande people from Niam-Niam
• Pyotr Kafarov, prominent sinologist, developed the cyrillization of Chinese, discovered and published many invaluable manuscripts, including The Secret History of the Mongols
• Yuri Knorozov, linguist, epigrapher and ethnographer, deciphered the ancient Maya script, proposed a decipherment for the Indus script
• Nikolay Krushevsky, co-inventor of the concept of phoneme and the systematic treatment of alternations
• Gerasim Lebedev, pioneer of Indology, introduced Bengali script typing to Europe, founded the first European-style drama theater in India
• Dmitry Likhachov, major 20th century expert on Old Russian language and literature
• Mikhail Lomonosov, polymath scientist and artist, wrote a grammar that reformed Russian literary language by combining Old Church Slavonic with vernacular tongue
• Nikolay Lvov, polymath artist and scientist, compiled the first significant collection of Russian folk songs, published epic bylinas
• Richard Maack, naturalist and ethographer of Siberia
• Sergey Malov, turkologist, classified the Turkic alphabets, deciphered ancient Orkhon script
• Nicholas Marr, put forth a pseudo-linguistic Japhetic theory on the origin of language
• Igor Melchuk, structural linguist, author of Meaning-Text Theory
• Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai, anthropologist who lived and traveled among the natives of Papua New Guinea and Pacific islands, prominent anti-racist
• Gerhardt Friedrich Müller, explorer and historian, a founder of ethnography
• Semyon Novgorodov, Yakut politician and linguist, creator of written Yakut language (Sakha scripts)
• Sergei Ozhegov, author of the most widely used explanatory dictionary of Russian language
• Stephan of Perm, 14th century missionary, converted Komi Permyaks to Christianity and invented the Old Permic script
• Yevgeny Polivanov, linguist, orientalist and polyglot, developed the cyrillization of Japanese
• Nicholas Poppe, prominent Altaic languages researcher
• Grigory Potanin, explorer of Central Asia, the first to research Salar people
• Vladimir Propp, formalist scholar, major researcher of folk tales and mythology
• Tatyana Proskuryakova, Mayanist scholar and archaeologist, deciphered the ancient Maya script
• George de Roerich, major 20th century Tibetologist
• Franz Anton Schiefner, prominent tibetologist, Finnic and Caucasus languages researcher
• Isaac Jacob Schmidt, the first researcher of Mongolian
• Leopold von Schrenck, naturalist and ethnographer, coined the term Paleo-Asiatic peoples, the first director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography
• Aleksey Shakhmatov, a founder of textology, prepared major 20th century reforms of Russian orthography, pioneered the systematic research of Old Russian and medieval Russian literature
• Lev Shcherba, phonetist and phonologist, author of the glokaya kuzdra phrase
• Fyodor Shcherbatskoy, Indologist, initiated the scholarly study of Buddhist philosophy in the West
• Ivan Snegiryov, an early collector of Russian proverbs and researcher of lubok prints
• Izmail Sreznevsky, leading 19th century Slavist, published Codex Zographensis, Codex Marianus and Kiev Fragments
• Sergei Starostin, prominent supporter of Altaic languages theory, proposed Dené–Caucasian languages macrofamily, reconstructed a number of Eurasian proto-languages
• Vasily Tatischev, geographer, ethnographer and historian, compiled the first encyclopedic dictionary of Russian
• Tenevil, Chukchi reindeer herder who created a writing system for the Chukchi language
• Nikolai Trubetzkoy, principal developer of phonology and inventor of morphophonology, defined phoneme, a founder of the Prague School of structural linguistics
• Dmitry Ushakov, author of the academic Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language
• Max Vasmer, leading Indo-European, Finno-Ugric and Turkic etymologist, author of the Etymological dictionary of the Russian language
• Viktor Vinogradov, linguist and philologist, founder of the Russian Language Institute
• Alexander Vostokov, coined the term Old Church Slavonic, discovered Ostromir Gospel (the most ancient East Slavic book), pioneer researcher of the Russian grammar
• Andrey Zaliznyak, author of the comprehensive systematic description of Russian inflection, prominent researcher of the Old Novgorod dialect and birch bark documents, proved the authentity of the Tale of Igor's Campaign
• Ludwik Zamenhof, inventor of Esperanto, the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language