Georgy Klimov was born on September 23, 1928 in Leningrad. Being a teenager, he survived the Siege of Leningrad.
In 1946, he graduated from the school and entered the Caucasian Department of the Eastern Faculty of Leningrad State University. In 1952, he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the Leningrad State University.
All his further scientific activities were associated with the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, then the RAS.
Since 1952, he was a post-gradaute student at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the specialty of the Kartvelian languages. In 1953, he was sent for two years to the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR.
Since 1954, he was Junior Researcher of the Department of Caucasian Languages of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, since 1961 he worked as Junior Researcher of the Department of General Linguistics. In 1955, he defended a PhD thesis "The main syntactic questions of the attributive complex in the Kartvelian languages”. For some years, he had been Academic Secretary of the Department of Caucasian Languages, and then the Department of General Linguistics. In 1962, he was appointed as Senior Researcher.
In 1965, he defended Dr.habil. thesis "The Etymological Dictionary of Kartvelian Languages".
From 1975 to 1997, he worked as Head of Section of Caucasian languages.
From 1981 to 1985, Georgy Klimov was a member of the expert council of the Higher Attestation Commission.
In 1988, he was awarded the title of Professor.
Laureate of the 1995 State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology.
For many years he was the executive secretary of the journal Problems of Linguistics, as well as a member of the chief editorial board of the series of volumes "Etymology", vice-president of the European Society of Geolinguistics and Dialectology, a member of the Editor-in-Chief of the Linguistic Atlas of Europe, a member of the European Linguistic Society and the European Society of Caucasian Studies.
For a more detailed biographical note, see his Wikipedia page.
Photos
We are grateful to Joy Edelman for the provided photos
Science Index
Selected publications
(A complete list of works is available at this link)
- Georgy Klimov. 1962. Sklonenie v kartvel'skikh yazykakh v sravnitel'no-istoricheskom aspekte. [Declination in the Kartvelian languages in a comparative historical aspect.]. M.
- Georgy Klimov. 1964. Etimologicheskii slovar' kartvel'skikh yazykov. [Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages.]. M.
- Georgy Klimov. 1965. Kavkazskie yazyki. [Caucasian Languages.]. M.
- Georgy Klimov. 1967. Fonema i morfema: K probleme lingvisticheskikh edinits. [Phoneme and morpheme: Towards the problem of linguistic units.]. M.
- Georgy Klimov. 1971. Voprosy metodiki srvavnitel'no-geneticheskikh issledovanii. [Questions of the methodology of comparative genetic research.]. M.
- Georgy Klimov. 1973. Ocherk obshchei teorii ergativnosti. [Essay on the general theory of ergativity.]. M.
- Georgy Klimov. 1977. Tipologiya yazykov aktivnogo stroya. [Typology of languages of the active system.]. M.
- Georgy Klimov. 1983. Printsipy kontensivnoi tipologii. [Principles of content typology.]. M.
- Georgy Klimov. 1986. Vvedenie v kavkazskoe yazykoznanie. [Introduction to Caucasian Linguistics.]. M.
- Georgy Klimov. 1990. Osnovy lingvisticheskoi komparativistiki. [Foundations of linguistic comparative studies.]. M.
- 1994. Georgy Klimov. 1994. Drevneishie indoevropeizmy kartvel'skikh yazykov. [The most ancient Indo-Europeanisms of the Kartvelian languages.]. M.
Published posthumously
- G.A.Klimov Etymological dictionary of the Kartvelian languages. Berlin; N.Y.: de Gruyter, 1998.
Rewritten and expanded Etymological dictionary of the Kartvelian languages was prepared by Georgy Klimov for publication in English, but he read only the first correction. The book was published only after the depth of the author. - G.A.Klimov, Majid Khalilov. 2003. Slovar' kavkazskikh yazykov: Sopostavlenie osnovnoi leksiki. [Dictionary of Caucasian Languages: Comparison of Basic Vocabulary.]. M.
- G.A.Klimov, O.M. Kajaia. 2013. Megrel'sko-russko-gruzinskii slovar'. [Megrelian-Russian-Georgian dictionary.]. M.
Republications of monographs
In 2007 the monograph "Introduction to Caucasian Linguistics" was republished. In 2009: "Principles of content typology", "Essay on the general theory of ergativity", "Typology of languages of the active system", "Foundations of linguistic comparative studies", "Phoneme and morpheme: Towards the problem of linguistic units"; in 2010: "The most ancient Indo-Europeanisms of the Kartvelian languages".