Henrik Birnbaum (December 13, 1925 – April 30, 2002) was an American linguist,

Slavist Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics, is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic peoples, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was ...

and historian.

Education and work

Birnbaum was born in Breslau, today's

Wrocław Wrocław is a city in southwestern Poland, and the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. It is the largest city and historical capital of the region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the Oder River in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Eu ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. He received his PhD in Slavic Philology in 1954. He worked as a

docent The term "docent" is derived from the Latin word , which is the third-person plural present active indicative of ('to teach, to lecture'). Becoming a docent is often referred to as habilitation or doctor of science and is an academic qualifi ...

at the

Stockholm University Stockholm University (SU) () is a public university, public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, social ...

in 1958-1961, as an Associate Professor of Slavic languages and literature at the

University of California at Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the Ca ...

(UCLA), and as a tenured professor at the same university in 1964-1994. He was a guest professor at many American and European universities. From 1992 he led the Department of Medieval Studies at

Central European University Central European University (CEU; , ) is a private research university in Vienna. The university offers graduate and undergraduate programs in the social sciences and humanities, which are accredited in Austria and the United States. The univ ...

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

. He authored more than 300 scientific publications in the fields of

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

dialectology Dialectology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , ''-logy, -logia'') is the scientific study of dialects: subsets of languages. Though in the 19th century a branch of historical linguistics, dialectology is often now c ...

, comparative grammar of

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

, history and culture of the

Slavs The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and ...

, 18 of which are books and monographs. Since 1992 he was a regular member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

, since 1981 a corresponding member of the

Swedish Academy The Swedish Academy (), founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish language authority. Outside Scandinavia, it is best known as the body t ...

, since 1986 a corresponding member of the

Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (; , HAZU) is the national academy of Croatia. HAZU was founded under the patronage of the Croatian bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer under the name Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (, JAZU) since its ...

, and since 1988 a corresponding member of the

Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences (, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society of distinguished scholars a ...

Works

* ''Untersuchungen zu den Zukunftsumschreibungen mit dem Infinitiv im Altkirchenslavischen. Ein Beitrag zur historischen Verbalsyntax des Slavischen'', Stockholm, 1958. * ''Slaverna och deras grannfolk. En kort orientering'' he Slavs and Their Neighbors. A Short Orientation Uppsala, 1961. * ''Studies on Predication in Russian I'', Santa Monica, CA, 1964. * ''Studies on Predication in Russian II'', Santa Monica, CA, 1965. * ''Problems of Typological and Genetic Linguistics Viewed in a Generative Framework'', The Hague, 1970. * ''On Medieval and Renaissance Slavic Writing. Selected Essays'', The Hague, 1974. * ''Common Slavic: Progress and Problems in its Reconstruction, Cambridge'', MA, 1975, 21979. * ''Doktor Faustus und Doktor Schiwago. Versuch ueber zwei Zeitromane aus Exilsicht'', Lisse, 1976. * ''Linguistic Reconstruction: Its Potentials and Limitations in a New Perspective'', Washington, D.C., 1977. * ''Lord Novgorod the Great: Essays in the History and Culture of a Medieval City-State. Part One: The Historical Background'', Columbus, OH, 1981. * ''Essays in Early Slavic Civilization / Studien zur Fruehkultur der Slaven'', Munich, 1981. * ''Recent Advances in the Reconstruction of Common Slavic'' (1971-1982) ointly with P.T. Merrill Columbus, OH, 1984. * ''Lord Novgorod the Great: Sociopolitical Experiment and Cultural Achievement'', Los Angeles, 1985. * ''Praslavianskii iazyk. Dostizhenia i problemy v ego rekonstruktsii'', Moscow, 1987. * ''Novgorod and Dubrovnik: Two Slavic City Republics and Their Civilization'', Zagreb, 1989. * ''Aspects of the Slavic Middle Ages and Slavic Renaissance Culture'', New York, 1992. * ''Novgorod in Focus'', Columbus, OH, 1996.

References

External links

Birnbaum's UCLA webpage, in memoriam
* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Birnbaum, Henrik Linguists of Slavic languages Writers from Wrocław University of California, Los Angeles faculty Academic staff of Central European University Academic staff of Stockholm University 1925 births 2002 deaths Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the Polish Academy of Sciences Polish emigrants to the United States 20th-century American linguists