Aleksandr Pavlovich Volodin (, 14 November 1935 – 6 July 2017) was a Soviet and Russian linguist, specializing in

Paleo-Asiatic The Paleo-Siberian languages are several language isolates and small language families spoken in parts of Siberia. They are not known to have any genetic relationship to each other; their only common link is that they are held to have antedated ...

and

Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric () is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic languages, Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in ...

languages. Volodin studied Finno-Ugric languages on the College of Philology of the A. A. Zhdanov Leningrad State University between 1953 and 1958. From 1961, he worked at the Language Institute of the

Academy of Sciences of the USSR The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991. It united the country's leading scientists and was subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (u ...

, specializing in endangered

Itelmen language Itelmen () or Western Itelmen, formerly known as Western Kamchadal, is a language of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family spoken on the western coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Fewer than a hundred native speakers, mostly elderly, in a few settlements ...

of Kamchatka. He received his Ph.D. in 1980, and from 2005 to 2017 he worked as a professor at the

Herzen University Herzen University, or formally the Russian State Pedagogical University in the name of A. I. Herzen () is a university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was formerly known as the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. It is one of the largest ...

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, as well as with the Institute of Language Research (ILI) of the Languages of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN). Volodin published around 190 scientific and pedagogic papers and textbooks, and 12 scientific monographs. He participated in 10 expeditions to

Kamchatka The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...

, where he studied the language and culture of

Kereks Kereks ( autonym: , , "seaside people"; ) are an ethnic group of people in Russia. In the 2021 census, only 23 people registered as ethnic Kereks in Russia. According to the 2010 census, there were only 4, and according to the 2002 census, there w ...

and

Itelmen The Itelmens (; ) are an Indigenous ethnic group of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. The Itelmen language is distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, forming the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family, but it is now virtually extinct, the vas ...

; and on the

Naryan-Mar Naryan-Mar (; ) is a sea and river port town and the administrative center of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia. The town is situated on the right bank of the Pechora River, upstream from the river's mouth, on the Barents Sea. Naryan-Mar lies n ...

region of Russian Arctic, studying

Nenets people The Nenets (; ), in the past also called 'Samoyeds' or 'Yuraks', are a Samoyedic ethnic group native to Arctic Russia, Russian Far North. According to the latest census in 2021, there were 49,646 Nenets in the Russian Federation, most of them l ...

and

languages Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is ch ...

. He lived in Saint Petersburg.

References

Linguists from Russia 1935 births 2017 deaths Academic staff of Herzen University {{Russia-linguist-stub