Vyacheslav Ivanov | |
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| Вячеслав Иванов | |
 Ivanov at the 6 Moscow International Book Festival, 2011 | |
| Born | Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov (1929-08-21)21 August 1929 Moscow,Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Died | 7 October 2017(2017-10-07) (aged 88) Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Citizenship | Soviet Union,Russia |
| Alma mater | Moscow State University |
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| Institutions | Moscow State University Russian State University for the Humanities University of California, Los Angeles Stanford University Yale University |
Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov (Russian:Вячесла́в Все́володович Ива́нов[vʲɪtɕɪˈslafˈfsʲevələdəvʲɪtɕɪˈvanəf]; 21 August 1929 – 7 October 2017) was a prominent Soviet and Russianphilologist,semiotician andIndo-Europeanist probably best known for hisglottalic theory ofIndo-Europeanconsonantism and for placing the Indo-Europeanurheimat in the area of theArmenian Highlands andLake Urmia.
Vyacheslav Ivanov's father wasVsevolod Ivanov, a prominent Soviet writer. His mother was an actress who worked in the theatre ofVsevolod Meyerhold. His childhood was clouded by disease and war, especially inTashkent.
Ivanov was educated atMoscow University and worked there until 1958, when he was fired on account of his sympathy withBoris Pasternak andRoman Jakobson. By that time, he had made some important contributions toIndo-European studies and became one of the leading authorities on theHittite language.
The member of the academies of sciences and learned societies:
He was elected a full member of theRussian Academy of Sciences in 2000, and he has been a Foreign Fellow of theBritish Academy since 1977.[2]
Also, in 1989 he was elected to theSupreme Soviet of Russia, but left for the United States soon thereafter.
During the early 1960s, Ivanov was one of the first Soviet scholars to take a keen interest in the development ofsemiotics. He worked withVladimir Toporov on several linguistic monographs, including an outline ofSanskrit. In 1962 he joined Toporov andJuri Lotman in establishing theTartu-Moscow Semiotic School. During the 1970s Ivanov worked withTamaz Gamkrelidze on a new theory about the Indo-European phonetic system: the famousglottalic theory. These two academics worked together also on a new theory ofIndo-European migrations, during the 1980s, which was most recently advocated by them inIndo-European and Indo-Europeans (1995).
In 1965 Ivanov edited, wrote extensive scholarly comments, and published the first Russian edition of previously unpublished "Psychology of Art" byLev Vygotsky (the work written in the first half of the 1920s). The second, extended and corrected edition of the book came out in 1968 and included another Vygotsky's unpublished work, his treatise onShakespeare'sHamlet (written in 1915-1916). The first edition of the book was subsequently translated into English by Scripta Technica Inc. and released byMIT Press in 1971.
