Georgios Hatzidakis

Georgios Hatzidakis was a Greek linguist and philologist, who is regarded as the father of linguistics in Greece. He was the first chair of Linguistics and Indian Philology at the University of Athens in 1890–1923. He was also a Cretan patriot, who fought in the uprising of 1866 against the Ottoman Empire. He studied classical philology at the University of Athens and linguistics at the University of Leipzig with Georg Curtius and Karl Brugmann. He wrote many works on the history and development of the Greek language, from ancient to modern times. He also initiated the project of the Historical Lexicon of the Greek Language, which aimed to document the evolution of Greek vocabulary from its origins to the present. He was a member of the Academy of Athens and received many honors and awards for his contributions to Greek culture and scholarship. He died in 1941 at the age of 97.