Vyacheslav Ivanov

Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov ( , 21 August 1929 – 7 October 2017) was a prominent Soviet/Russian philologist, semiotician and Indo-Europeanist probably best known for his glottalic theory of Indo-European consonantism and for placing the Indo-European urheimat in the area of the Armenian Highlands and Lake Urmia. Early life Vyacheslav Ivanov's father was Vsevolod Ivanov, one of the most prominent Soviet writers. His mother was an actress who worked in the theatre of Vsevolod Meyerhold. His childhood was clouded by disease and war, especially in Tashkent. Ivanov was educated at Moscow University and worked there until 1958, when he was fired on account of his sympathy with Boris Pasternak and Roman Jakobson. By that time, he had made some important contributions to Indo-European studies and became one of the leading authorities on the Hittite language. Career 1959–1961 — head of the Research Group for Machine Translation at the Institute of Computer Technology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow 1963–1989 — head of the Structural Typology Sector of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow 1989–1993 — director of the All-Union Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow (VGBIL) 1989–1995 — chair of the Department of Theory and History of World Culture of the Philosophical Faculty of Moscow State University 1992–2017 — founding director of Moscow State University's Institute of World Culture 2003–2017 — founding director of the Russian Anthropological School at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow from November 1991 — professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Program of Indo-European Studies at University of California — Los Angeles; retired in 2015, distinguished research professor since then