Researcher at the Department of African Languages from 1966 to 1976.
In 1954, he graduated from the Moscow State Linguistic University with a degree in Spanish studies.
In 1958, he defended his PhD thesis on the topic "The evolution of the types of verbal figure names from Latin to Romance languages" there.
In 1962-1966, he worked at the Institute of the Russian Language of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and after emigrating to Israel in 1976 he worked at the University of Haifa.
He is a prominent specialist in comparative-historical linguistics and the distant relationship of the languages of the Nostratic and Afro-Asian macrofamilies in particular.
While working in the Department of African Languages, he specialized in the study of Afro-Asian languages, and more specifically, Cushitic languages.
Aaron Dolgopolsky died on July 20, 2012, at the age of 82.
Selected publications
- Gipoteza drevnejšego rodstva jazykov Severnoj Evrazii. Problemy fonetičeskix sootvetstvij [A Hypothesis concerning Ancient Relationships Between Languages in Northern Eurasia. The problems of phonetic correspondences]. Moscow, Nauka, 1964. 22 p. (A report for the VII International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences.)
- Sravnitel'no-istoričeskaja fonetika kušitskix jazykov [Comparative-historical phonetics of the Cushitic languages]. Moscow, Nauka, 1973. 398 p.
- Kušitskie jazyki [Cushitic languages] // Languages of Asia and Africa. Vol. 4/2. Moscow, Nauka, 1991. P. 5-147. [Prepared in 1976]
- The Nostratic macrofamily and linguistic paleontology. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 1998. 116 p.
- From Proto-Semitic to Hebrew. Phonology. Etymological approach in a Hamito-Semitic perspective. Milano: Centro Studi Camito-Semitici, 1999.
- Nostratic Dictionary. 4 volumes. Cambridge: Apollo, 2008.
- Indievropejskij slovar' c nostratičeskimi ètimologijami [Indo-European Dictionary with Nostratic etymologies]. 3 volumes. (Executive editor Anna Dybo). Moscow, Rukopisnye pamyatniki Drevnej Rusi, 2013. 2803 p.