Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze facts for kids
Tamaz Gamkrelidze (born October 23, 1929 – died February 10, 2021) was a very important Georgian linguist. A linguist is a scientist who studies languages. He was also an orientalist, which means he studied the languages and cultures of the East. He was an Academic (a top scholar) and later the President of the Georgian Academy of Sciences. He earned his Doctor of Sciences degree in 1963 and became a Professor in 1964.
His Life and Work
Tamaz Gamkrelidze was born in Kutaisi, Georgia. His brother, Revaz Gamkrelidze, is also a famous mathematician and a top scholar.
Tamaz Gamkrelidze finished his studies at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Tbilisi State University (TSU) in 1952. He became a professor at this university in 1964. From 1966, he led the department for studying language structure and how language is used. From 1973 to 2006, he was the Director of the Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies in Tbilisi.
Gamkrelidze wrote many important books and papers. He studied Indo-European languages, which are a large family of languages spoken across Europe and parts of Asia. He also worked on Ancient languages, Theoretical linguistics (the study of how language works), and the languages of Georgia (called Kartvelology). He was a main supporter of the glottalic theory. This was a new idea about how the sounds in the very old Proto-Indo-European language might have been made.
In the 1980s, Gamkrelidze worked with Vyacheslav Ivanov. They developed a new idea about how Indo-European languages spread across the world. They wrote about this in their book "Indo-European and Indo-Europeans" in 1995.
From 1988 to 1995, he was the editor of a top language magazine called "Voprosy jazykoznanija." This magazine is from the Russian Academy of Science. He was also a member of many important groups around the world. These included the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was also a member of the British Academy and the European Society of Linguistics. He was even the President of the European Society of Linguistics from 1986 to 1988.
He received many awards for his work. These included the Lenin Prize in 1988 and the Humboldt International Prize in 1989. He also received the Ivane Javakhishvili Prize from the Georgian Academy of Sciences in 1992.
From 1992 to 2005, Tamaz Gamkrelidze was a member of the Parliament of Georgia. In August 1991, he was chosen to be the Rector (head) of Tbilisi State University. However, he stayed in this role for only a short time.
Since 2000, he was an honorary citizen of Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia. Tamaz Gamkrelidze passed away on February 10, 2021, at the age of 91.
See also
- Georgian Academy of Sciences
- Glottalic theory
